SER IE nee Tate eth Ta a HET eT tee NES ner rte tay aie me 


NON ee me ee 


aT eee ea ese RL Se ee, Fe Fhe sat eee A, tree! wr Seep PEGG Te 
SNS SE a me at a a ena eee ee Ne! mip eee, 

Fe ee ee Te er ete 
BANS ONS eS TTS im SRT re SHE iene ane atte oe x 
Na SNAG ETE IS eet ae RT 
ae END Nw Nat renee tS 


jis Se 
i ash 

SF nee ae Soca AON at are NR he ea 

Ma aie ate 


SOS a Re TS fae er ee we 


Lr rey ree 
ne a Nat Nat TER re AN iy met Ale NY Fay CARE REE Ur Or nc nee ae Z 


Sica ep scrotal, 


Bote ae RO er ee ee 


See ee 


Ae SEs 


ST tance ST Ree Th ae 








Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2022 with funding from 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


https://archive.org/details/sonofbowerylifesOOstel_ 0 





an 


vi 
ia 


yu \ 


hie, 


abba 








Wiss va 
PRAT it i ir. 


‘ 


el 
gong , 


ii 
Nee 


Kn 
ay vt 





A SON 
OF THE BOWERY 


CHARLES STELZLE 











Fane MOE 
PRINGE> 
No 1 


| “ 
MAR 4 - 1927 
POON, | rN. 
OGIGAL SE 
OF THE BOWERY 


he Life Story of an East Side American 





BY Wz 
CHARLES ’STELZLE 





NEw “BW yorx 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 


thy 


i 2 i 
pag a My 
Fe ahd 


ie 


on 
yi 


ba 
oN 


ee | 


Paya 


4 
5 


th 
if 


+7 F A 
men n 
iy Ate 
Can 


bel 
wily 


Neihves 


2 
2 
; 
i 


YW 





INTRODUCTION 


The editor of a magazine in writing an article about me 
one time, said that ‘“‘Stelzle just missed being a great man.” 
The writer missed the whole point of my experience. I hon- 
estly never tried to be a “great man,”—nor wanted to be. I 
just tried to make the most of whatever job came along— 
and this naturally led me into many other fields. Really, the 
only job for which I was regularly trained was that of a 
machinist. Incidentally, his viewpoint has been invaluable to 
me—no matter at what else I may have worked. 

It is a joy to be free from the embarrassments and restraints 
of “greatness,” because I can just go along doing pretty much 
the things I want to do—go to the movies, sit on a fire-hydrant, 
hobnob with the socially ostracized “under dog,” accept alike 
“superior” or “inferior” jobs—without feeling that I am 
sacrificing my dignity or crocking my “greatness.” 

Most of the chapters of this book were printed serially in 
the Outlook during the early half of 1926, but they have all 
been elaborated and some entirely new chapters have been 
written. I wish to express my appreciation to the Outlook 
editors for their permission to use this material in book form. 


CHARLES STELZLE. 


iz 


trey . . 
AERTS 
ae 


| 


‘ ; 
te) : 


bay lee) iit, * 
es is) hi hd iP eis 
ray ey 


"a 
ay, ' 
bd ri ew RA 
i Taal : 
noe 


ov 





CONTENTS 


Our SIDE OF THE City 

Home Forks OrF THE BOWERY 
GETTING OuT INTO THE WoRLD 
LEARNING THE MAcHINIsT TRADE 
Tue Boss AND THE BARKEEPER . 
BREAKING INTO THE MINIsTRY . 
PIONEERING WITH CHURCH AND LABOR 
CAMPAIGNING FOR WoRKINGMEN 
OBsERVATIONS OF A SOCIOLOGIST 

THe Facts Asout SURVEYS 
ORGANIZING THE LaBor "TEMPLE 
THE Work oF THE Lapor TEMPLE . 
BUCKING THE RADICALS 

Promotinc NationaL MovEMENTS 
GETTING OuT oF THE CHURCH 
FIGHTING FOR A BETTER CITIZENSHIP 
FACING THE PROHIBITION QUESTION . 


DoING THE WorK OF AN EVANGELIST 


SOLVING THE UNEMPLOYMENT PROBLEM . 


MEETING SoME oF AmMERICcA’s Bic MEN 
ARBITRATING LABOR TROUBLES . 
PROMOTION AND PUBLICITY 


CHILDREN OF THE CITY 


SomE EXPERIENCES IN FoREIGN COUNTRIES 


Lagpor Lreapers HERE AND ABROAD 


THE RELIGION OF THE NEw Democracy . 


1x 


PAGE 
13 
21 
30 
40 
46 
53 
66 
77 
96 

IIO 

117 

124 

134 

146 

167 

176 

IgI 

210 

223 

243 

257 

266 

280 

295 

313 

328 


be) thi 
4 ast ace 


My aly (ihe R itt 
TOM vi 
Peel thy] 


J 
A 





A SON OF THE BOWERY 


rie Ri pre ase ice) 
; ah i Cee a 


pitt 


5» 


ae 


<n 





A SON OF THE BOWERY 


I 
QURE SIDR OP Eris CLiy 


Rok several generations the East Side of New York has 
been synonymous with depravity. Newspapers have de- 
lighted in printing big headlines about the criminals and degen- 
erates who were supposed to make the East Side tenements 
their rendezvous. SBlood-curdling stories have been written 
about subterranean cellars and dark passageways in which 
fearful crimes were committed. 

New York’s “rubber neck” wagons are still doing a thriving 
business with visitors from Indiana and Iowa by promising to 
show them the “lair” of the East Side gunmen and the white- 
slave traffickers. And the gullible travelers from the Middle 
West grip their seats in happy ecstasy as they are megaphoned 
through the “Ghettos’ and the “slums” of America’s greatest 
city, anticipating the thrills which they will give their friends 
and neighbors when they get back home, telling them how 
narrowly they escaped with their lives. If they but knew it, 
they were taken through the safest sections of the city. Of 
course the East Side has contributed its share of the crim- 
inals and degenerates and the immoral people of the city, but 
no more than its share. The worst parts of New York from 
this standpoint have been in the middle section of the city— 
the Tenderloin, and ‘“‘Hell’s Kitchen” on the upper West Side, 
and other picturesque, police-guarded precincts. It has rarely 
been necessary doubly to patrol the streets of the tenement dis- 
tricts of the East Side because it was feared that crime and 
disorder would break out. 

No, the East Side hasn’t been criminally inclined. Its chief 
crime has been its poverty. The mass of the people living east 

13 


14 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


of Fifth Avenue in the lower part of Manhattan have always 
been honest wage-earners, living perfectly decent lives, moving 
into the suburbs or the uptown districts as soon as they could 
afford it, mainly so that they might have more breathing space, 
more light, and a better chance to raise their children. 

I was born in the heart of what is now not only the most 
densely populated part of the East Side, but of the world. 
There I lived for twenty years, coming back ten years later to 
engage in social and religious work in the same general district. 
There are only thirty cities in the entire country which have 
a greater density of population than is found in this East 
Side district. If all the people living in this district were sud- 
denly seized with a desire to rush into the street, there wouldn’t 
be room enough for them to stand. 

There are many places of historical interest in this neighbor- 
hood, among them the old Marble Cemetery, on Second Street 
just off Second Avenue. This was the first cemetery that | 
knew as a boy, and it had a peculiar fascination forme. Here © 
rested the bodies of many old New Yorkers—among them 
Adam and Noah Brown, who during their lifetime built ships 
for Commodore Perry’s fleet in 1812; John Ericsson, builder 
of the Monitor, of Civil War fame, whose body has since been 
removed to his native country; and for many years President 
James Monroe. The names on the tombstones in this old 
cemetery are all but effaced, and yet here and there one can 
make out the name of a former Knickerbocker who would be 
shocked beyond measure could he walk through these side- 
streets which were open fields when he lived there. 

It must not be imagined that the neighborhood is irreligious. 
Jewish and Catholic enterprises flourish, and there are scores 
of little synagogues scattered throughout the tenements, meet- 
ing in the tenement-houses themselves, although there are many 
pretentious buildings, usually former Protestant churches, 
which have been converted into orthodox synagogues. Once 
this was a Protestant stronghold, but in recent years scores of 
Protestant churches have moved out. 

For nearly fifty years I have watched this boyhood neigh- 
borhood of mine grow. Sweeping through it like the ancient 


OUR SIDE OF THE CITY 15 


invasion of England, where the real Britons were followed by 
the Danes and the Norsemen, the Angles and the Saxons, the 
Romans and the Normans, finally creating the present race of 
Englishmen,—there have followed successively in this East 
Side district the Yankees, the Irish, the Germans, the Bohe- 
mians, the Russians, the Italians, the Greeks, besides a great 
smattering of smaller races, each naturally leaving behind a 
remnant, until to-day there is scarcely a country on the face 
of the globe which isn’t represented. It is a mosaic of nations, 
and about as picturesque as mosaics usually are with all their 
form and color. 

But the final result has been quite different from what it was 
in England. There a masterful race arose which to-day 
stands supreme in European affairs, Here, we have produced 
—‘East-Siders.” 

Much has been said about New York’s being a great 
“melting-pot of the nations,’ and it is unquestionably true that 
the East Side of New York, while producing its own distinc- 
tive type of “East-Siders,” is strongly, persistently American in 
spirit. Many of the foreign-born retain some of their Old 
Country customs, but they are none the less, if not better, Amer- 
icans for doing so. It should be remembered that not all 
“Americans” were born in America. 

Wise leaders among the foreign-born encourage them to 
emulate the best that they left in the Old Country—and who 
can deny that each of their native lands contains histories 
and traditions which any nation might well be proud to have 
incorporated in the lives and characters of its people. 

My parents came to the East Side of New York when they 
were quite young—my mother was only six. Her father was 
a prosperous German baker, who had a large delivery-wagon 
service and a city-wide reputation because of the rye bread he 
sold. I remember distinctly my mother’s business-like air as 
she helped fill in as special saleswoman on Saturday nights 
when the bakery shop on Eldridge Street was crowded with 
customers. My grandfather accumulated a considerable for- 
tune, and returned to Hanover, Germany, his native town. 

My father was a brewer by trade. He probably was a good 


16 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


workman, but he was a poor business man, and the generous 
wedding dowry which he put into a brewery of his own soon 
disappeared. One of the heritages which he left consisted of a 
big book of unpaid accounts. I recall how, for years, I 
thumbed over these accounts as a boy, and dreamed of all the 
good things we might enjoy if these debts were to be paid. As 
my mother had married against the distinct wishes of her 
parents, her pride would not permit her to appeal to them for 
help. So when my father died, she moved with her children 
into the very heart of the tenement district of the East Side, 
resolving to fight her way through alone. How well she did it, 
and what she suffered in the doing of it, will forever make her 
a heroine in my eyes. 

And so the struggle began. She, who had enjoyed the 
comforts of a prosperous home, with no cause for financial 
anxiety, was now to spend many years in a hand-to-hand battle 
with all the horrors of poverty, asking favors of no one. 

It would be easy to tell harrowing tales of life among the 
people with whom I lived, and some of these tales ought to 
be told. But any account that leaves out the real joy of 
living, as one sees it even to-day on the East Side, when con- 
ditions are undoubtedly worse in some respects than they were 
forty years ago, would be unfair to the poorer tenement people, 
who are by no means morbid in their outlook on life. There 
is no doubt that I suffered as much on account of poverty as 
does the average youngster now living in lower New York. 
But, taking it altogether, I was by no means an unhappy boy, 
even when I was living in the midst of extreme poverty. It is 
a question whether the son of the “princely merchant,” about 
whom I read in books drawn from the Sunday-school library, 
got as much real excitement out of life as I did when, for 
instance, I swam from the end of an East Side dock, in violation 
of the law, and in peril of my life, dodging the passing ferry- 
boats which swirled the river into dangerous eddies, or when 
I spent a stolen day in the treacherous swamps of Long Island 
hunting cat-tails and swallows’ nests, or when we threw a 
lifelike dummy in front of the bobtail horse car, and watched 
the driver frantically pull rein. 


OUR SIDE OF THE CITY. 17 


Grand Street on Saturday night was as good as a show. 
It was the great shopping center of New York’s lower East 
Side forty years ago. Ridley’s, the biggest department store 
in that part of the city, had a large Saturday night trade. 
Lord and Taylor’s and Lichenstein’s, the next largest stores, 
were on the same street. Peddlers’ carts lined the gutters, 
block after block, from the Bowery to Essex Street and beyond, 
spilling over into the side-streets and practically filling Hester 
Street, which paralleled the main thoroughfare. “Old Straw,” 
who sold straw from a ramshackle wagon, and dressed his nag 
of a horse in pants and other old garments, added a bit of color. 

For those who bargained and cheated, and even for those 
who did a legitimate business, Grand Street on Saturday night 
was a serious affair. But for the boys who were out for a lark 
it was ariot of fun. The “movies’’ did not exist in those days, 
and there were practically no boys’ clubs nor social settlements, 
and few institutional churches. There were a great many self- 
organized social clubs that met on the first floors of some of 
the smaller “private houses’’—so distinguished from the usual 
tenements because the front doors were usually kept locked— 
and in rooms back of saloons. But membership in these was 
only for the older boys who were earning enough to afford 
that luxury. 

For the small boy there was only the gang and Grand Street. 
Sometimes it was both. This made it all the more interesting. 
Not infrequently the feuds of the gangs were fought out on 
Grand Street, sometimes to the great consternation of the mer- 
chants of the carts, the contents of which were tumbled into 
the street in the excitement of a “scrap” between the Orchard 
Street and Allen Street gangs. Many a plate-glass window 
suffered on the same account, and often we went home scarred 
with many a tell-tale “shiner,” which raw beef and oysters could 
not obliterate. 

I belonged to the Orchard Street gang. Our leader was a 
short, stocky, red-headed Irish youngster, who was absolutely 
fearless and who was known to stand his ground alone, the 
solitary target for the stones of the Allen Street gang, after 
the rest of the Orchard Street gang had retreated. And on 


18 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


these occasions he came back to his crowd with great scorn; 
what he left unsaid was not worth mentioning. It did not 
matter what he said, however. He was always unanimously 
chosen as our leader. He would probably have been the leader 
whether we had chosen him or not: he was the only Irish boy in 
the gang and he was a born fighter. No doubt he later became 
a Tammany Hall leader in the district. 

And while we’re on the subject, it might not be amiss to 
say that Tammany Hall’s influence on the East Side was, and 
is, largely due to the very human qualities shown by its repre- 
sentatives. They not only know every one who lives in the 
block, but they know about his domestic and economic and 
social needs. They know about them the whole year round, and 
try to supply them; whereas the reformers live uptown and— 
so it appears to’ the people—seem to be in business for the pur- 
pose of taking privileges away from the people, rather than 
furnishing them with jobs, and coal, and food, and getting 
them out of the police courts, if they happen to have trouble 
with the police. On the other hand, it is by helping in such 
matters as these that Tammany Hall gains influence, even 
though, in former days, it was accomplished through unsavory 
agencies. I recall distinctly the notorious grog shop called 
“The Morgue,’ on Allen and Stanton Streets, run by Assem- 
blyman Phil Wissig, with its flag-pole in front, as high as a 
house, but from which I never saw a flag flown. 

Grand Street was to me the greatest street in New York. 
Occasionally I took a walk up Broadway, but “the Great 
White Way” was then unknown, and Broadway was almost 
deserted at night. There were no electric lights, and when 
the few gas lamps in the stores were extinguished, New York’s 
chief thoroughfare was a dreary place. “Times Square” in 
those days was one of the loneliest spots in New York. 
There were no theaters in the district. Daly’s Theatre on 
Broadway and Twenty-ninth Street was about the farthest up- 
town one would go. I looked with scorn upon the large num- 
ber of tiny wooden buildings that lined Broadway between 
Thirty-fourth and Forty-second Streets, and always came back 


OUR SIDE OF THE CITY 19 


to Grand Street with a feeling of pride that lower New York 
possessed the finest street in the city. 

In strong contrast to the rough life of the gang and the 
excitement of Grand Street was the influence which the illu- 
minated cross on the steeple of St. Augustine’s Chapel, on 
Houston Street east of the Bowery, had upon me. I was 
just about thirteen or fourteen, the age at which the religious 
appeal takes strongest hold of a boy. This cross, which could 
be seen for blocks against the deep night sky, appealed tremen- 
dously to my religious imagination. 

Almost directly opposite St. Augustine’s Chapel is Second 
Avenue. About half a mile up this street is St. Mark’s Church. 
The impression this church made upon me was quite different 
from that made by St. Augustine’s. For when I thought 
of St. Mark’s it was not with any religious feeling, but always 
in connection with the fact that the body of A. T. Stewart, 
the merchant prince who founded the store now known as 
John Wanamaker’s, had been stolen from its resting place on 
the Tenth Street side of the graveyard. What a source of 
mysterious possibilities this story was to us boys! Nothing 
that St. Mark’s ever did was big enough to overshadow the 
story of the ghouls who robbed the graveyard. Not that we 
cared particularly for Stewart; for some reason which I have 
forgotten, he was not popular among the East-Siders. 

But Second Avenue, even forty years ago, was the “Great 
White Way” of the East Side. It was the great promenade 
for the young people, and on Sunday afternoon it was a gay 
sight. This ‘“Lover’s Lane” extended as far north as Stuy- 
vesant Park. Even in those days there were many German 
coffee-houses and reading-rooms all along the avenue. It was 
an event of importance when I was taken to one of them by 
an aunt or an uncle. Most of them served only coffee or choco- 
late and tea, and all kinds of German coffee cake. There was a 
very comfortable, homelike atmosphere about these little 
coffee-houses, and the people used to linger and gossip or read. 

Second Avenue is still the great thoroughfare of the East 
Side. Early in the morning its wide pavements are crowded 


20 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


with foreign workers who pour out of the tenements in the 
side streets and march like a mighty army, all moving in the 
same direction, toward the clothing factories and department 
stores just beyond Union and Madison Squares. Scores of 
thousands of men and women from the tenements make their 
daily pilgrimage along this fine avenue, so full of human 
and historic interest. Standing on the corner of Second Ave- 
nue and Fourteenth Street, in the early morning, one may count 
something like forty thousand people walking or riding past 
in a single hour. 

At night, from the big theater on Houston Street to the Labor 
Temple on Fourteenth Street, which I organized about fifteen 
years ago—the story of which will be told later—the avenue is 
a blaze of electric lights, cafés, bath-houses, motion-picture 
theaters, jewelry shops, and dozens of other enterprises. Each 
nationality has its own particular café or casino, where its 
favorite old country dishes are served and where its national 
airs are played by native musicians. On Saturday and Sunday 
nights many of those who have profited in business and moved 
uptown or out of town come back to enjoy a “regular dinner” 
—with all that goes with it. | 

Even a casual stroll down Second Avenue and into some 
of the side-streets will reveal the signs of the people’s aspira- 
tions. ‘The way they throng the public baths—the district 
supports one of the biggest Turkish baths in the city, conducted 
exclusively for men—shows the desire for bodily cleanliness. 
There are “beauty shoppes” on nearly every block. Dentists 
do a profitable business. Even automobile agencies seem to 
thrive; and palms are used for decorative purposes just as in 
the automobile district uptown. Pianos and musical instru- 
ments are prominently displayed for sale.in many of the 
store windows. Apartment houses are given most royal names, 
like “Florence Court,” “Victoria Hall,” and “The Imperial.” 

During the years that I lived in this same neighborhood, 
these wonderful-looking houses would have been occupied by 
the “aristocracy” of the East Side—to-day they are rented 
by workingmen of the most ordinary type. 


II 
HOME FOLKS OFF THE BOWERY 


A LITTLE alley on First Street near the Bowery, in which 
the houses are tumbledown, ramshackle, decayed, was 
originally called “Extra Place” by the city; but its name has 
been changed to “Riverside Drive” by the tenement dwellers 
in this diminutive street, a name which means the last word in 
luxury to them. I once lived in this alley, but only for a few 
months. : 

We always lived in tenements when I was a boy. The 
first that I remember was a very old-fashioned one. It was 
a big, ugly house. The bedrooms were all dark, and had no 
outside ventilation. I can still picture the room in which [ 
slept during those stifling, almost unendurable August nights, 
with its little barred window looking out on a dark, narrow, 
ill-smelling hall, the scene of some of the most important events 
in the social and domestic life of my neighbors. Here much 
of the courting was done. Here, too, the women did the family 
washing. 

There was one hydrant on each floor, in the hall, and, as 
there was no running water in the rooms, the women had to 
carry it in, a bucketful at a time, when they did their washing 
or when some one was going to have a bath, which was usually 
taken in a wash-tub. Such a scramble as there was on wash- 
days! I wonder, now, why the landlord didn’t assign a differ- 
ent day in the week to each tenant of a particular floor. But 
everybody seemed to think that the only wash-day worth hav- 
ing was Monday. So there was sometimes a good deal of 
excitement in the halls. Most of the tenement battles were 
fought there—that is, among the women and children; I 
suppose the men went to the corner saloon to settle their 


differences. 
21 


29 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


Ordinarily I was callously indifferent to these quarrels. 
Only when there threatened to be a real fight did I take any 
interest. East-Sider that I was, I thoroughly enjoyed any bit 
of excitement; and the constant struggle for existence on the 
Kast Side lent it a restless atmosphere which perhaps, after 
all, gave zest to life. If an East Side boy is at all healthy, 
he is about as “live” a boy as one can find anywhere. He 
acquires the habit as a very small child of taking an interest 
in everything that happens. Most of us “East-Siders” have 
never got out of the habit. 

As I look back on it now, I can see that life must have 
been pretty hard for the women in the tenements. They were 
shut up all day lung in dark, ugly rooms, with nothing to divert 
their minds from the sordidness of their existence. Every 
little while you would hear of some woman who had gone 
insane and had been taken to the madhouse. I wonder that 
more of them didn’t go mad! But her neighbors and friends 
quickly forgot about her. They were so busy living their 
own lives that they could not waste more than an exclamation 
or two on her fate. 

Although there were many wretched people living in the 
tenements, there were others who were marvels of refinement 
and culture. One of these, for whom I always had the great- 
est respect and admiration, was a public-school teacher. Her 
father was a news-dealer, who delivered the morning papers 
in the neighborhood. Both her parents were Germans of a 
high type. Sometimes this tall, fine-looking girl took her 
father’s place, especially if the old man happened to be sick; 
and as a small boy it seemed to me, as she walked with grace- 
ful dignity down the street, that she was far above the rest of 
us—almost ‘a divine creature come to live among the common 
folks on earth. | 

The second tenement in which we lived was one facing the 
court, on First Street near the Bowery, to which I have just 
referred, now occupied by a Jewish theater. There were six 
houses in this court, and it was the noisiest place imaginable. 
Even I, healthy, noisy boy that I must have been, noticed the 
constant shouting and quarreling among the people in the court. 


HOME FOLKS OFF BOWERY 23 


Nearly everybody who lived there seemed to be drunk about 
half the time. The first day we moved in, a drunken woman 
wandered into the bedroom; when my mother tried to get her 
out, she swore frightfully. I remember how shocked I was. I 
had never heard a woman swear before. I felt instinctively that 
it was a horribly degrading thing. Perhaps I thought swearing 
only a man’s prerogative. 

We left that tenement after a few months and moved into a 
rear tenement on Rivington Street near Lewis. We had two 
rooms there. Life must have been pretty much of a struggle 
for my mother just about this time. She supported my sisters 
and me by sewing wrappers, for which she was paid two dollars 
a dozen. It took her three days, and a good share of three 
nights, to finish one dozen; so our weekly income was not 
a magnificent one. How I hated the sight of those wrappers! 
They became a perfect nightmare to me. Everything had to be 
sacrificed to them. My mother had little time to stop and 
talk to us, and we children soon learned to do a great many 
things for ourselves, because she was always sewing, sewing. 
Sometimes I would wake up—it would seem to me surely 
time to get up—and she would still be sewing. If my mother 
had not had a wonderful constitution and a still more remark- 
able character, she could never have stood the strain of those 
years. Many a time she went to bed without her supper because 
we children were hungry and there wasn’t quite enough for all. 

Our principal article of food was stale rolls with a little salt 
sprinkled on them to make them go down a little more easily. 
It was years before we tasted butter, and we very rarely had 
fruit, only on state occasions such as Christmas or birthdays. 

But conditions soon became even more serious with us. We 
could not pay the rent for even those two rear tenement rooms. 
So one day the landlord had us put out upon the streets, A 
deputy sheriff with his husky assistants piled onto the side- 
walk the little furniture we owned. It was the darkest hour 
that we had yet experienced. I can still see the heart-broken 
appearance of my mother. This is the one time that I can 
recall when she was completely discouraged—except, perhaps, 
a few weeks before, when most of the plaster in the “living” 


24 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


room which we had just “vacated” had fallen down, almost 
killing her and the baby. 

However, it wasn’t for more than a couple of hours. Rooms 
were found a few blocks away—of course the new landlord 
did not know that our furniture was even then on the side- 
_ walk,—and a saloon-keeper across the street loaned us a couple 
of dollars to have it moved into our new home. And he did 
it out of pure generosity, because mother wasn’t one of his 
customers. 

My mother would not accept charity. Once, when a neighbor 
persuaded her to make application to a “relief agency” for food 
for us children, an “investigator” came to look into the case 
and asked so many humiliating questions that my mother tossed 
her head and said she guessed she could get along without any 
help. And she did. I have always had a tremendous admira- 
tion for her wonderful self-reliance. It was no doubt her 
example that made me ambitious to get on in life. 

I have long nurtured a most vigorous protest against the 
practice of slumming, especially on the part of those who call 
every tenement neighborhood a “slum.’’ One wonders just 
when it is that lack of money reduces a man to a biological 
and sociological freak, and loses for him his right to independ- 
ent family life, unmolested by the prying “slummer.”’ And 
by just what Heaven-inspired right does the latter consider 
himself the chosen one to force himself into the homes and 
lives of the poor, to study this unusual species of mankind. 
The ‘‘slummer” usually comes, not because he wishes to help 
the poor, but because of a passing fad or an ill-bred curiosity, 
which, if it were manifested by the tenement poor themselves 
in a desire to see how the rich are living and “study” them, 
would land them in jail. 

While the philosophy that there is nothing essentially degrad- 
ing about being poor is by no means a new one, it is too often 
a forgotten one. Among some professional social workers and 
more amateur “‘investigators’’ every poor person or anybody 
who lives in a tenement or a poor district is indiscriminately 
classed as “of the slums” and arbitrarily characterized as vi- 
cious and low. | 


HOME FOLKS OFF BOWERY 25 


There is a great difference between a “slum” and a tenement 
neighborhood, although even the people of the slum are not 
as bad as they are sometimes painted. The people who live in 
tenement-houses possess, as a class, just as fine characters 
as those who compose the “upper” classes, albeit they may 
express their virtues in a more crude fashion. I make this 
assertion after a life spent equally with each group and a fair 
opportunity to know both kinds of people. 

There was a distinct social cleavage in the average tenement 
on the East Side, and there was just as much snobbishness 
among the poor as the poor to-day are so fond of charging 
against the rich. The families occupying the first floor were 
usually American and the most prosperous in the house. They 
held their heads very high. Whether they were right or not 
in their assumption of privilege, they always considered that 
they had first right to the yard; and if any of the people from 
the other floors presumed to share the privilege of the little 
strip of flagstones, they were treated with great contempt by 
the first-floor aristocrats. The higher up you lived, the poorer 
you were, and consequently the farther down the soctal scale. 
The church missionary went from house to house via the roof, 
because most of the people of her church lived at the top of 
the tenements. The more prosperous the East side family be- 
came, the less they attended church. 

During those stifling August nights, when it was simply 
impossible to sleep in the ordinary dark bedroom, we “top 
floorers” slept on the roof. Usually the people from the 
other floors joined us sooner or later; but we always managed 
to get the best places. We considered the roof our rightful 
property, just as the “‘first floorers’” appropriated the yard; 
and when the first-floor aristocracy came up with their pillows 
to get a breath of air in the sultry summer nights, we treated 
them with scorn and contempt and didn’t make any attempt to 
give them a chance to get good places. The tables were turned. 
We were the aristocracy of the roof. 

The best part about living up under the roof was that you 
could keep pigeons. However, these pigeons were not kept 
merely as pets; they were used for “‘sporting’’ purposes. Nearly 


26 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


every tenement roof in the district was the home of a flock. 
If there was a lone pigeon flying about, every boy that spotted 
it immediately sent out his flock to try to bring home the 
“stranger,” which was then captured by means of a simply 
devised trap. There was a good deal of rivalry in this business, 
for pigeons could always be sold at the bird store. They were 
sold pretty promptly after being caught, for woe betide the 
youngster who was found with a stolen pigeon! ‘There was 
many a scuffle on the roofs of the tenements in an effort on the 
part of the real owner to regain by force his captured pigeon, 
sometimes at the peril of both owner and captor falling off the 
edge of the roof. We used to sit on the roof nearly all day 
Sunday watching for stray pigeons. 

A certain little group of us boys, about half a dozen of us, 
formed a club, and met in a pitch-dark corner of the cellar 
which was partitioned off from the rest of the space. 

This meeting-place had its charms. It was secluded. Then, 
there were plenty of cats. It did not require much imagina- 
tion to fancy that the two burning eyes that stared at us in the 
dark belonged to wild animals, creatures to be pursued to the 
limit of one’s daring. Somebody one day organized a “‘boys’ 
club” in our neighborhood, but it was only mildly successful. 
In the first place, there were too many rules and regulations; 
and, in the second place, we hadn’t a thing to do with the 
running of it. It was ever so much more cheerful in our dark 
cellar, and we had full charge. 

We made some seats and a table of old boxes, and used 
to sit solemnly in a circle, with one miserable little end of a 
candle burning in the center, and discuss all sorts of weighty 
things. What we talked about, however, I haven’t the slightest 
recollection, except that we dwelt a great deal on our chances 
for going out West to shoot Indians and eat bear meat in 
true trapper fashion. 

Another meeting-place for the club was a space, about 
two feet wide and twenty-five feet long, between the two high 
board fences that marked the boundaries of our lot and the 
lot on the next street. I never could understand why the two 
feet were wasted. But no doubt when one or the other owner 


HOME FOLKS OFF BOWERY 27 


erected his fence, a mistake was made in marking off the 
boundary-line. 

Strange as it may seem, at the bottom of this abyss there 
was some real soil, from which sprouted green things. They 
were nothing but weeds, but they were things that grew, and 
that was enough; for there wasn’t an inch of dirt to be found 
in the stone-paved yard just over the fence, and that belonged 
to the lower-floor folks, anyway. The rays of the sun shot 
down between the high fences for a few minutes at noon, and 
worked wonders for the rank vegetation. We shared this 
secluded spot with the cats of the neighborhood; or, rather, 
they shared it with us—principally when we weren’t around. 
Somehow, our club boys and cats were sworn enemies. We 
regarded them as the wild beasts of our “forest.” 

There was a milkman, named Moore, who had been a 
friend of my grandfather, who used to give us a big can of 
milk every day without charge. I had to-walk two miles to 
get it. Even to this day I can rattle off as fast as I can talk 
the names of the seventeen streets from the Bowery to Cannon 
Street which I daily crossed to get that can of milk! And once 
in a while a butcher, another friend of my grandfather, would 
/ give us a chunk of meat. How delicious was the fragrant, 
steamy odor that filled the room when my mother was cooking 
meat! 

I was always allowed a penny a day for my lunches while I 
was going to school, with strict instructions as to what to buy. 
My mother knew only too well the way of a boy with a penny; 
so she took care to decide my luncheon menu once and for 
all. It was “two stale rolls’—the inevitable rolls! Close by 
the school which I attended was a restaurant kept by a fat, 
jovial, bald-headed Jew, who seemed eternally to be laughing 
at some private joke. This restaurant had one big window, 
which was invariably filled with the most tempting dishes. I[ 
used to stand and look at the goodies—the brown, crackly 
skinned roasts, the beautiful lemon pies topped off with fluffy 
white meringue, and the silvery herring decked out with thin 
slices of red pepper, and bay leaves and black peppercorns. 
This was my favorite place to stand to eat my lunch. My in- 


28 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


terest in the display of food was evidently so marked that one 
day the kindly Jew asked me to come in and have some soup. 
After that I regularly took up my stand in front of the window 
while I munched my dry rolls, keeping my “weather eye” 
open for my patron’s bald head. As soon as it appeared above 
the short curtains at the back of the window, I knew that I was 
due for another lunch. My mother made me promise never 
to go in without being asked. I didn’t; but I made it as easy 
as I knew how for that Jew to invite me. 

When the wrapper business was dull, my mother took in 
washing. One of her customers was an actor who lived in an 
attic on the Bowery and played a woman’s part in “The 
Two Orphans.” He had a good many fancy white skirts 
and waists in his wash. I stood very much in awe of him. I 
was quite convinced that he was an important person. Any- 
body who could act must be a marvel. I was tremendously 
impressed with his slightest remark, and I would loiter in his 
attic as long as I could, studying the photographs of noted 
actors and actresses in fancy attitudes such as ordinary mortals 
never assume (and which I supposed was one of the attributes 
of greatness) and the big floppy show-bills stuck up with 
pins on his walls. I felt that I was in the presence of genius, 
only I didn’t put it that way to myself, because I had never 
even heard of the word. 

One day this actor did not have the change to pay for his 
washing, and he “didn’t have time” to send me out for it. 
It happened the next week and the next, three or four times. 
When I finally called to get the money, armed with a strong 
determination to get it, he was gone. I couldn’t believe it at 
first. To think that that great man, to whose slightest word 
on the stage hundreds of people would hang breathlessly, should 
go off without paying for his washing! It was too much! It 
was the shattering of my first ideal. 

My mother also washed for a restaurant-keeper who lived 
on Stanton Street. It was my job to get the laundry every 
Sunday afternoon. I have a vivid recollection of one day’s 
experience with the restaurant man and his wife. I had scarcely 
got home when the restaurant-keeper and his wife came ex- 


HOME FOLKS OFF BOWERY 29 


citedly into our kitchen, having followed me closely, apparently, 
and accused my mother of having stolen seventy-five dollars 
out of one of the dresses in the basket of washing I had just 
brought home. They threatened to call in a policeman unless 
the money was given up immediately. My poor mother went 
through the basket of clothes with trembling hands, but found 
nothing. 

The man and his wife were not convinced, however, and left 
declaring that a policeman would come after her in a few min- 
utes. We spent a very unhappy afternoon, expecting any minute 
to see the dreaded form of a policeman enter the room. As 
night came on and he failed to appear, we were somewhat re- 
lieved. But after we had gone to bed and the kerosene light 
had been turned out I lay awake in the kitchen, where I slept, 
trembling at every sound outside the door. The next day I 
went down to the restaurant, which was on Chambers Street, 
determined to find out what had happened to keep that police- 
man away. To my great indignation, the comfortable-looking 
restaurant-keeper told me that his wife had found the money 
when she got home! There were many things I could have said 
tothat man. If he had been a boy, I’d have said them. Instead, 
I marched out of the place and never went to the Zimmerman’s 
again for washing. 


III 
GETTINGOUT INTO THE WORLD 


Ce day a letter came from my grandfather offering to 
have me brought to Germany, where I would be thor- 
oughly educated, even to a university training. When my 
father died, my mother’s friends had urged her to put at least 
one or two of the children into an orphan asylum; but she 
would not listen to them. I recall the horror I felt as I heard 
the cold-blooded discussion of some of our relatives, who 
calmly tried to order our lives. Their fear was that we would 
become dependent upon them. To this day I am grateful that 
my mother got along without their assistance. My grand- 
father’s offer, however, was plainly well worth considering; 
so plans were made to send me over with the ship’s carpenter 
of the steamer Donau. 

The day before I was to sail this kind German took my 
mother and me all over the ship, showed me my berth, and 
talked very fascinatingly about ocean travel. I remember we 
had a delicious little lunch in his cabin, of pumpernickel and 
white bread sandwiches, Leberwurst, and big red apples. I was 
to sail the next morning at ten o’clock. I went home with my 
mother, excited at the thought of the adventurous journey on 
the big boat, and with my mind dwelling on many experiences 
that I might possibly have. I went to bed feeling that I was 
a very important person. 

The next morning I was up bright and early. My bag with 
my few belongings had been packed the night before. Soon 
the jolly carpenter came to get me. Then the unexpected hap- 
pened. My mother refused to let me go. I didn’t know 
whether to weep or feel relieved at not having to part from my 
family. There was something in my mother’s face, however, 
that kept me from thinking about my side of the question. 
She never spoke of this incident after that, and I never did 


GETTING OUT INTO THE WORLD 31 


either. And, somehow, I have never felt that I lost an oppor- 
tunity. 

So I stayed in New York and went to the public school, 
working after hours and on Saturdays. We lived in the base- 
ment of a house on Orchard Street about this time; we always 
lived in one of the extremes of the house, either at the top or 
the bottom, because the rent was cheapest there. Across the 
hall from us was a little tobacco factory, one of those miserable 
little sweat-shops that the trades unions have done so much 
to drive out of existence. I went to work there. 

It was my first job, stripping tobacco leaves. I was eight 
years old. The owner paid me fifty cents a week for working 
from the middle of the afternoon until supper time, and two 
big cigars as a gratuity! It appears that the general practice 
of these little shops was to give each employee “smokers” at 
the end of a day’s work, and, as I was an “employee,” I was 
entitled to two cigars. I didn’t smoke them, even though I may 
have thought it a manly performance, because the smell of 
tobacco made me feel sick, and it was all that I could do to 
conceal my nausea after stripping the pungent “‘Havana”’ 
leaves for several hours, without making matters worse by 
trying to smoke. I never told my mother of my dizzy feeling, 
as she would have promptly stopped my working in the shop. 
I was so proud of doing something toward the support of the 
family that I didn’t propose to have the dignity of breadwinner 
taken from me. 

My next job was selling newspapers. I stood on the corner 
of Fifth Street and Avenue B, and yelled at the top of my 
voice: “Pepper—pepper—Daily Noos!” The old Daily News 
was a four-page evening paper widely read by working people. 
Indeed, besides the Evening Telegram, a few copies of which 
straggled into the East Side, it was the only evening paper 
that came into the tenement district. It was a thoroughly 
human sheet, though not particularly sensational as we think 
of “yellow journalism’ to-day. There was only one special 
“feature,” a daily short story, which I always devoured, re- 
gardless of the fact that it was not always seasoned for a 
small boy’s mental palate. 


32 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


Selling newspapers wasn’t hard work. I never got “stuck” 
with a single copy. And we boys used to have lots of fun 
between sales, pitching pennies and wrestling. Some of the 
boys were so successful at penny pitching that they made more 
money that way than by selling papers. We had never heard 
of ‘shooting craps” in those days. 

For several months during a school-vacation period I served 
desserts in a restaurant, dispensing ice-cream and Napoleon 
cakes exclusively. This was an interesting job for a boy of 
ten, especially as a good many portions came back untouched 
and no record was kept of them—the boss simply kept tally of 
the desserts by the number of meals eaten. 

During the Christmas season I went from house to house 
peddling oranges and Christmas candles. My mother and I 
went down to Washington Market and bought the oranges 
wholesale, by the box, and then lugged them home in big 
market-baskets. In spite of all the poverty on the East Side, 
there was always a great stir over Christmas. It was the one 
big celebration of the year. Poor as we were, my mother did 
not think it an extravagance to have a Christmas tree for us. 
She used to get one for fifteen cents, and we thought it a 
mighty big, fine tree, too. She would wait until we were all in 
+ bed and asleep on the night before Christmas; then she would 


slip out and get-the tree and from various hiding-places she 


would lovingly bring out the decorations : lemon sticks and red 
_and white peppermint rings, a few gilded nuts that she had used 
over and over again in our Christmas trees, and pink and blue 
and yellow tissue-paper rosettes with candies tied in the center 
of them. Besides, there were long strings of sugar-coated 
popcorn which she twined in and out of the dark-green 
branches. So quietly did she work that none of us ever woke 
up to catch her playing Santa Claus. 

We always had a big celebration at Sunday school on Christ- 
mas. It was one of the great events of the whole year to us. 
Most of the boys I knew somehow managed to attend several 
Sunday schools as the holiday season approached, so that they 
might receive Christrtias-gifts from each of these schools. 
Hope Chapel was a little mission occupying the second and 


GETTING OUT INTO THE WORLD 338 


third floors of an old tenement house on the corner of Fourth 
Street and Avenue C. On the ground floor there was a grocery 
store, and back of it a stable. For twenty years Hope Chapel 
occupied this place, and it was a very important influence in my 
life. A wholesale druggist, a millionaire, was superintendent 
of the Sunday school. He used to spend night after night visit- 
ing the poor, and was really devoted to the people of the neigh- 
borhood. 

Our “gang” used to “hang out” in some bakery wagons 
that always stood across the street from Hope Chapel in the 
evenings. Inside of these wagons we huddled, concocting all 
sorts of deviltry. The policemen were after us about half the 
time. One of our favorite amusements was blocking up the 
keyhole of the front door of the Chapel with bits of wood just 
before service time. Then, from our hiding-place, we would 
watch the old sexton try to open the door, and poke and dig 
and jam the key angrily into the hole. We would whisper 
and chuckle with impish delight as we watched him struggle. 

Another trick was to blow into the gas-pipe in the hall, 
filling the pipe with air, so that soon the lights in the meeting 
room would go out, leaving the congregation in darkness. 

I had a chum at this time; his name was Joe. And what 
mischief I failed to think of he evolved. We never did any-. 
thing really malicious, for we were not bad boys; we simply 
were full of life and spirits, and we had to be doing something 
constantly. If I hadn’t had to spend so much of my boyhood 
helping support my family, I am afraid I should have got into 
more trouble than I did. | 

As it was, I was twice arrested. On neither occasion, how- 
ever, was I at fault. The first time it was for stealing a dog. 
At least, the owner said I stole him when I returned the “stray” 
and tried to collect the reward. The truth was, the dog fol- 
lowed me home the night before. When I entered the owner’s 
home with the dog, he promptly locked the door and called 
a policeman. I was handcuffed to his wrist, and pulled rather © 
vigorously up Sixth Avenue, with a crowd following closely, 
to see what would happen to the “young thief.’”’ I was sixteen. 
I was kept in the police station all night, trying to sleep on the 


34 A. SON OF THE BOWERY 


hard board in my cell. In the morning I was brought to the 
Jefferson Market Police Court, where I was herded with a 
mob of Saturday night drunks, pickpockets, pimps and other 
degenerates. Soon I was bailed out by an East Side saloon- 
keeper. I think I should have been liberated in the first instance 
if I hadn’t told Captain Williams that I was a member of Dr. 
Howard Crosby’s chapel. Dr. Crosby—vigorous preacher that 
he was, and predecessor of Dr. Charles H. Parkhurst—had 
been charging the captain in no uncertain terms with responsi- 
bility for misdoings in the old Tenderloin district, of which 
he was in charge. I was promptly let go when I was brought 
to trial, the jury not even leaving the box to consider the 
flimsy evidence of my accuser, who obviously was simply trying 
to get out of paying me the reward. 

The second time I was arrested was shortly before an elec- 
tion. As usual, the boys of the neighborhood were picking up 
boxes and barrels wherever they could find them, without much 
regard to ownership, for a big bonfire on election night. Sud- 
denly they saw a policeman making for them, and they all ran, 
leaving me walking along quite alone. The fact was I was 
coming home from night school. I had not even stopped where 
they were. But, as the only available boy, the policeman 
arrested me and took me to the station-house at Fifth Street 
and First Avenue. 

I wasn’t afraid. I felt sure of myself, and frankly told 
the sergeant that I had come from night school. Just then 
the principal of the school, attracted by the crowd about the 
police station, came in to see what the trouble was. ‘The ser- 
geant turned to him and asked: “Do you know this boy? 
He says he goes to your night school.” 

The principal looked at me for a second, and then quickly 
replied: “I never saw him. there; he doesn’t belong to night 
school at all!” 

I was so stunned at this assertion that I hadn’t wit enough 
to tell him in what class I was nor who was my teacher. How- 
ever, the sergeant let me go, but I was so furious at the prin- 
cipal’s remarks that I refused ever to go back to that night 


GETTING OUT INTO THE WORLD 35 


school. For a while I didn’t go to any, but pretty soon my 
ambition revived and I went to another school. 

From the time I was eleven years old I read voraciously. I 
was told that when I was twelve I could take out a membership 
ticket in the public library at the Bond Street Branch. Promptly 
on my birthday I presented myself for membership, and from 
that time on read a book a day. 

I feared, after a while, that if the librarian discovered that — 
I was taking out so many books she would withdraw my privi- 
lege of drawing out any or punish me in some other way. To 
obviate this I sneaked stealthily into the book rooms and tried 
to get away before she could see me, and I attempted to alter- 
nate between the clerks at the desk who kept the records of — 
books drawn out. 

By the time I was fourteen I had a fairly good smattering 
of the arts and sciences. But what stayed with me longest and 
had the greatest influence on me was the knowledge of the 
Bible which I acquired one summer while I was convalescing 
from an illness. 

To be more specific, I was recovering from a Fourth of July 
accident. I had sneaked up to the roof of our tenement early 
in the morning on the Fourth of July to light a mass of 
powder taken from broken Roman candles and skyrockets. 
What a glorious blaze it would make! Boylike, I thoroughly 
enjoyed a big flare of fire. I anticipated having a beautiful 
time; but I didn’t realize that the powder would blaze so high. 
I got the full force of it in my face, and was an invalid for 
two months. I[ couldn’t go to the library for books and we had 
very few at home, so I finally got hold of an old Bible, as a last 
resort, and began reading at random. 

My eye fell on a passage telling about a battle between King 
David and the Philistines—a fight, just what I loved! Battered 
up as I was, I still had spirit enough left in me thoroughly to 
-enjoy the story of King David. I devoured page after page; 
and when I had read all about David, I began at the beginning 
of the Bible and went straight through. All day long I sat 
in a rocking-chair with my head bandaged, reading. I read 
more of the Bible during my convalescence than the average 


36 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


theological student reads during his entire three years’ seminary 
course; and I had a far more vivid impression of Old Testa- 
ment stories than most students ever acquire. Even to-day I 
can locate almost any verse in the Bible because of this early 
reading. 

I was very regular in my attendance at Sunday school. We 
boys liked Hope Chapel even though we did play pranks to such 
an extent that one woman finally tried to have Joe and me put 
out of the Sunday school. She sent a petition around to the 
members of the congregation for them to sign, but only secured 
six signatures, four of which were those of members of her 
own family. Soon after, we both applied for church mem- 
bership. I can’t remember just why. Strange to say, I was 
accepted by the session, and Joe was rejected. The only way 
that I can account for it was that Joe talked too much! 

Hope Chapel was a very human, sympathetic place under the 
direction of a hearty young Scotch-Irishman, Dr. W. J. 
McKittrick. He was fond of sports, which probably helped 
him preach a wholesome Gospel. He won my everlasting 
gratitude by taking me to my first professional baseball game. 
It was the game in which Kelly made his famous “‘slide.” 

Later he tutored me three nights a week in English Grammar, 
Plane Geometry, Mathematics, and several other subjects, be- 
cause I had a strong desire to go to college. I never reached 
Princeton—his own Alma Mater, and for which he was 
preparing me—but the nights I spent with him have helped me 
tremendously all through life. To devote three nights a week 
to one boy, however eager he was to secure an education, 
was a service that few men would cheerfully, voluntarily and 
freely give. Dr. McKittrick was my close and always helpful 
friend for nearly thirty years after this early experience. His 
breadth of view and liberal theological beliefs prevented his 
being recognized as one of America’s greatest preachers, in a 
day when old-fashioned orthodoxy was regarded as the prime 
essential, no matter what other talents one might have possessed. 

Dr. McKittrick was succeeded by Dr. John Bancroft Devins, 
who for some years was in charge of the Tribune Fresh Air 
Fund, and who later became the owner and editor of the New 


GETTING OUT INTO THE WORLD 37 


York Observer, an old-established Presbyterian weekly news- 
paper. Dr. Devins’ deep and devoted interest in the social con- 
ditions of the people in the tenements was a constant inspiration 
to me, and I owe much to him, not only because of what he 
taught me through his practical methods of work, but because 
of his assistance in getting me started in what later became my 
life-work. 

There were some very good “variety shows” on the Bowery 
in my boyhood days—the old London, Harry Miner’s, and 
Tony Pastor’s—and I used to go regularly once a week. I had 
a good friend, a saloon-keeper, who received one free ticket 
a week for displaying the play-bills in his window. He wasn’t 
a “low-browed brute,” and he didn’t give me the ticket because 
he wanted to entice me into his saloon. He was just a good- 
natured German who had taken a fancy tome. He wasn’t fond 
of the theater himself, so he gave the tickets to me. 

And how I did enjoy those shows! They were usually good, 
wholesome fun, full of farcical situations, with some clog- 
dancing and acrobatic feats for variety. Then there was a 
short melodramatic sketch, which invariably stirred me to the 
point of weeping. There was always a poor “goil’? who 
received very bad treatment at the hands of the villain. I 
always had my program high up in front of my face and 
studied it hard for a few minutes after this sketch was over 
until I regained my manly composure. Crude as were those 
sketches, they stimulated my imagination and often made 
me think much about the lives of others—not for long at a 
time, it is true; but I do know that the theater gave me a 
glimpse of another world from that in which I was living. 

It is curious how the trouble of stage characters moved 
me to tears and how little I thought about the real troubles 
of my neighbors. J suppose it was because they never com- 
plained. One family of six, our neighbors, lived on bran for 
a week. This must have been even worse than stale rolls. But 
no one knew about it until they were out of their condition of 
dire poverty. 

Soon I left school—I was eleven years old—and went to 
work regularly. My first position after I left school was 


38 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


in an artificial-flower shop. At the end of the first week’s 
work I was paid two big “trade” dollars, and all the way 
home I held them in my hands, banging them together like a 
pair of cymbals. I worked there until I was fifteen. There 
were mostly girls in the place except for the few boys who were 
“cutters”—those who cut the flower petals out of sheets of silk 
or nainsook folded into about a dozen thicknesses. We used 
stamps or metal cutters for this purpose and pounded them out 
with big wooden mallets, 

The shop was on Bleecker Street, near Green, close to one 
of New York’s famous “Red Light’ districts. The build- 
ing was an old residence, converted into lofts. It was full of 
rats. During the summer when work was dull, and only the 
foreman and I were employed, the rats would swarm out over 
the empty floors. I got many a thrill taking a shot at them 
from my perch on top of a work-table, with a small, single- 
barreled .22 caliber pistol which I had acquired in preparation 
for my long-planned western Indian “scout” expedition. 

I spent many happy days in this shop. Two of my sisters 
worked there, too, and all the girls were, as we used to say, 
“the real goods.” JI am convinced, as the result of my few 
years’ experience in this shop, which employed about seventy- 
five girls, mostly from the East Side, that the shop-girl is about 
as virtuous as the average girl in any other walk of life. This 
impression has been confirmed by later conversations with my 
sisters, who, of course, knew most of these girls intimately. 

But my “big job” at this time was that of machinist appren- 
tice in the works of R. Hoe & Company, the printing-press 
manufacturers. Very early in my life I had an ambition to run 
a newspaper. I used to sit on the end of the docks of the 
East River and build castles in the air: how I would become a 
newspaper editor in a small city and shape public opinion, and 
finally, of course, run the whole town. 

One of my cousins had served an apprenticeship in the shops 
of R. Hoe & Company, and from there he had gone as press- 
man to the Daily News, the paper that I sold when I was a 
small boy. This cousin offered to get me a job building 
printing-presses. I thought that was pretty closely related to 


GETTING OUT INTO THE WORLD 39 


the newspaper business. So I gladly went with him to inter- 
view the superintendent of R. Hoe & Company. 

But I found, to my chagrin, that I was nine months too 
young to be entered as an apprentice, as they did not employ 
boys in the machine-shop under sixteen years of age. But I 
was offered a job in the warerooms of the concern, and there 
I worked until I was old enough to begin my apprenticeship. 

Then began the five long years of service, at two dollars a 
week for the first year, and seven dollars a week during the 
last year of my apprenticeship. I had been earning six dollars - 
at the artificial-flower shop. To permit me to take another 
job at only two dollars a week was another evidence of the 
courage and self-sacrifice of my mother, because it meant 
additional burdens for her. But she was far-visioned enough 
to see that in the end I would be holding a bigger job, and 
she was ready to pay the price. 


IV 
LEARNING THE MACHINIST’S TRADE 


N° man who ever wore a uniform did so with greater pride 
than when I put on my first pair of blue overalls as a 
machinist’s apprentice. To me they were a badge of honor. 
I had achieved a distinction to which I had been looking for- 
ward for years. 

It was my good fortune to spend my apprenticeship days in 
one of the greatest shops in America. It had a splendid or- 
ganization and the highest possible standards of workmanship. 
There was a night school which every apprentice was com- 
pelled to attend for five years, in which the laws of mechanics, 
mathematics, mechanical drawing, and English were taught. 
The firm not only gave free tuition, but furnished a free sup- 
per to every boy. 

It was in connection with this supper arrangement that I 
had my first experience with the human element in the labor 
problem. One night there was a general “strike” against the 
food that was being served. We sent our protest to the front 
office, and our committee was duly met by one of the bosses. 
In a very few minutes it was proved that the meat we were 
eating was the same cut and quality as that served to our mil- 
lionaire bosses in their private dining-room at noon. But the 
gang wasn’t satisfied. They didn’t want that kind of food, 
anyway. The upshot of the whole matter was that thereafter 
every boy was given a check for a certain amount of money 
which he might spend in any local restaurant, ordering what- 
ever the check would buy. 

I was soon made an assistant to the secretary of the mutual 
benefit society, and in this capacity I visited every part of the 
shop, becoming acquainted with the men in the various depart- 


ments, It was a great surprise to me that so few American 
40 


LEARNING MACHINIST’S TRADE 41 


workmen, unlike the English and German machinists in the 
shop, knew how to read a drawing or to work to scale. It 
is still true that comparatively few mechanics in this country 
are qualified to do the original scientific work in their daily 
tasks which would quickly lift them out of ordinary jobs. 
Many of the labor unions in America, realizing this fact, are 
now giving technical courses in their official journals, through 
which the quality of workmanship among their members is 
being greatly improved. It does not require very much tech- 
nical training to make a workman stand out superior to the 
great mass of his fellow-workers. | 

Having made this discovery very early in my apprenticeship 
days, I resolved that I was going to “beat them all to it.” 
So, not satisfied with the regular apprenticeship course, I took 
other studies, determined that some day I would be the boss 
of that shop. I deliberately plotted to let the foreman know 
in various ways that I had invested in a thirty-dollar set of 
technical bocks—their cost was equal to about two months’ 
wages, and I was paying for them on the installment plan— 
and that I was reading other books about construction work 
and modern machine-shop practice. For I also saw that 
among a couple of thousand men and boys I hadn’t much of 
a chance if I permitted my light to shine under a bushel. 
Whenever an opportunity came, I tried to make a record for 
speed or quality of work. 

But my ambition soon got me into trouble. One day word 
came that the big impression cylinder of a rotary press that 
had been sent to Australia had proved to be defective. No 
time was to be lost in making a new one. It was my job to 
cut two one-inch key-ways on the four-inch shaft, besides two 
long one-inch slots on the cylinder itself. It was a piece-work 
job: six dollars for what was ordinarily a twelve-hour job. 
I finished it in five hours, using some of the clever “kinks” I 
had evolved in the course of my studies, principally on tool 
shapes and cutting qualities of various kinds of steel. 

It was true that I actually risked my life standing over the 
top of the job, which was done on a big planing machine. The 
cylinder itself weighed about three tons. If the belt had broken, 


42 A. SON OF THE BOWERY 


I might have been cut in two. The work was done on Satur- 
day night, too, from seven o’clock until midnight, when I was 
extremely fatigued. 

How that steel curled off as I dug the tool into it, feeding 
it by hand! Somehow, when a machine acts that way you 
feel like petting it, as you would a horse. It becomes almost 
human, part of the man who is running it. 

When I came into the shop on Monday morning, I was 
highly elated. Everybody in the department was watching the 
progress of that cylinder. A big bonus was to be paid to the 
firm if it got through in record time, and I felt that I had 
given it a big boost. The superintendent was greatly pleased, 
and told me so. He was particularly gratified because I, 
though still an apprentice, had made the mechanics in the 
shop look rather sheepish. 

But I was compelled to live and work with those mechanics, 
and they soon showed me that I wasn’t going to get away 
with this record-breaking business so easily, especially on a 
piece-work job. 

“You think you’re damned smart, don’t you?” my nearest 
fellow-worker fired at me, after the superintendent got out of 
the way. 

“Sure I do,” I replied, with a grin. 

“Well, you won’t think so long,’ he said to me. “Wait 
until those damned efficiency experts in the office hear about 
it, and they'll cut your piece-work price so that you'll have to 
kill yourself to make a decent week’s wages.” 

This hadn’t occurred to me, but it probably wouldn’t have 
made any difference if it had, and I comforted myself with 
the thought that these experts would understand that the job 
had been turned out under very great pressure, and that it 
could not be sustained very long at a time. But the men 
were sore at me, and all during the day they showed it by 
throwing hardwood driving blocks in my direction and 
bunches of oily waste at my head when I wasn’t looking. I 
saw that this was no time for arguing, so I said nothing, but 
tried as good-naturedly as I could to stand their insults and 
injuries. Wasn’t I a free man? I consoled myself. Who 


LEARNING MACHINIST’S TRADE 43 


had a right to dictate to me how much work I should turn 
out? 

But in a few weeks a new piece-work schedule came down 
from the office. The price of the cylinder had been cut thirty 
per cent! Then the men gave me the horse laugh. How 
humiliated I felt! What was the use? These fellows were 
right. It didn’t pay to hustle. You get just as much money 
by not rushing. 

That’s the way I argued for a while; but I soon got over 
it, and went back to breaking records, or trying to. And it 
paid in the end. For before I had finished my apprenticeship 
I was promised that some day I would be given the foreman- 
ship of that department. I often wondered, however, what 
would become of the ordinary workman if high-pressure 
methods should prevail in all industries. What about the 
man who couldn’t stand the pace? Ordinarily, that cylinder 
was a twelve-hour job. I had made it a five-hour job through 
extraordinary methods which the average workman knew 
nothing about. 

I had heard a great deal about the snobbishness of the 
bosses and of the rich in general. And I saw some evidences 
of it. *There were some men in the office who undoubtedly 
looked upon the workers in the shop as an inferior order of 
human beings. Even the clerks regarded the shop men with 
contempt. This attitude resulted in a bitter hatred of the men 
toward whatever came from the office, men or messages. A 
notice posted upon the bulletin board was regarded with the 
greatest suspicion. “I wonder what those fellows have got up 
their sleeves now,’ was a common comment. The workmen 
felt that nothing good could come from behind that glass door 
that led into the office. And if perchance a worker in the shop 
should graduate into the office he was considered a renegade, 
a traitor to his class. And, as he knew the “tricks” of the 
shop, it was felt that he would soon turn out to be a common 
Spy. 

BBur strangely, snobbishness was more prevalent among the 
men themselves than it was between the office men and the 
shop workers; and with less excuse on the part of the men in 


44 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


the shop. For example, at lunch time the skilled mechanics 
would not think of permitting the laborers to eat their sand- 
wiches and drink their beer in the same corner in which they 
ate. The draughtsmen considered themselves much superior 
to the pattern-makers, the pattern-makers thought they were 
better than the machinists, the machinists looked down upon 
the tinsmiths, and so it went on. There were at least half a 
dozen different grades of “‘society’’ among the men in the shop. 
I am reminded of the women’s clubs I once encountered in a 
little railroad town in Minnesota. None of the wives of the 
firemen could join the club composed of the wives of the engi- 
neers; and as for the wives of the brakemen—they simply 
weren't in it! 

There was a big Yankee in my department who was prob- 
ably the most unpopular man in the place. He not only always 
stood with the bosses whenever a controversy arose between 
the men and the office, but he was always looking out for the 
bosses’ interest in the routine of his daily work. And this, of 
course, we thought unpardonable. One of his minor “sins” 
was that of going about the shop turning out the gas-jets 
which thoughtless workmen had left burning. 

But there was another habit for which they hated him most 
cordially. He always came into the shop at 6:30—we began 
at seven in those days and worked until six—and he filled his 
oil can and trimmed his oil lamp, ground his tools, and in 
other ways made ready all that he could before seven o'clock. 
Usually the engine started at about 6:45, so as to get a good 
start before the strain of hundreds of machines was placed 
upon it. And the Yankee mechanic invariably threw on the 
belt of his machine as soon as the engine was fairly under 
way, amid howls of derision from all over the shop. He 
worked on, apparently oblivious of it all. He just wanted to 
be industrious and economical. But the men thought he was 
an ordinary “sucker,” although that was the mildest term 

which they applied to him. 

Needless to say, he was not a member of the union. In- 
deed, he was the only man who worked when the men went 
out on strike; and I remember that during one strike he was 


LEARNING MACHINIST’S TRADE 465 


badly beaten up as he went out at noon hour to buy his can 
of beer. 

It is really a question whether a man of this general type is 
a useful man in the average shop. Some of his practices are 
undoubtedly commendable, but on the whole, his conduct only 
breeds discord and hatred because it is unreasonable to expect 
that his fellows in the shop can and will follow his thrifty 
example. 

The average workingman is more afraid of being out of a 
job than he is of going to hell. The possibility of losing my 
job in the Hoe press works constantly hung over me, although 
there was no particular cause for me to have feared that catas- 
trophe. Nevertheless the feeling that for any one of a num- 
ber of reasons the boss could fire me if he felt so disposed 
made me almost bitter toward him. Furthermore, any one of 
a number of minor bosses could have fired ‘the if he had really 
wanted to. | 

But one day the dreadful thing happened—I was fired. 
Times had become very dull. The men were being laid off 
in relays, and some of them never came back to the machine 
shop. 


V 
THE, BOSS | AND) THE BARKEEPER 


SHORT time before I was laid off, on a cold winter 

morning the janitor in the office failed to appear, and I 
was sent into the big boss’s private office to build a grate fire. 
I had never seen a grate before.. It was so big that I could 
almost get inside of it. Finally, just as I had got the fire 
started, I heard a step behind me, and there was the big boss, 
with a smile on his face, watching me. 

“Tt’s rather cold this morning, isn’t it?’ he said in a high- 
pitched, though not unpleasant, voice. 

_ He was not very popular in the shop. He rarely was seen 
there, and he never stopped to speak to anybody when he did 
rush through any of the departments. 

m aaa that I was so surprised that he spoke to me at 
all that I didn’t have sense enough to agree with him about 
the weather, but the chill in my own heart toward him dis- 
appeared. 

“You fellows are all wrong about the boss,” I declared with 
vigor, when I returned to the shop. And I began praising him 
because of his friendliness toward me, perhaps beyond what 
was his due, considering the slight evidence he had given of 
what I vehemently said was his natural disposition. But, what 
was most important, my own mind was changed, because, for 
once, I had had a real human contact with the man who had 
heretofore stood in my mind for everything that was auto- 
cratic and despotic. 

And so when I was laid off I took it as one of the things 
which just naturally comes into a workingman’s life—particu- 
larly as I lost only two weeks’ time. 

During those two weeks I spent my time wandering about 
the city interviewing the bosses of other machine shops, ask- 


ing for a job, but hoping that I would not find one, because 
46 | 


BOSS AND THE BARKEEPER A7 


I liked my own job best of all. I wanted to see what it was 
really like to hunt a job, because I had long been familiar 
with the bitterness which filled men’s hearts when they were 
out of work. 

Scores of other men haunted the gates of the shops that I 
visited, sometimes literally hundreds of them. I am afraid 
that some of the old resentment that the boss could hold my 
job in the hollow of his hand came back, aggravated by the 
treatment given me by many of the foremen or employment 
managers, who not only spoke gruffly but frequently swore at 
men who, because of their hunger or need of money for their 
families, were too aggressive in trying to find something to do. 

I was later to find out what unemployment in a big city 
really meant when it became my task to help find jobs for 
hundreds of thousands of men and women in New York City. 
And the personal experience which I had that winter, in my 
machine shop days, when it really did not matter much whether 
I found a job or not, gave me a much broader sympathy for 
the unemployed than I would probably otherwise have had. 

Most of the men who were out of work spent their time in 
the saloon, even though they had not very much money to 
spend. There was no other place to which they could go, and 
the saloon was in a very real sense the social center for work- 
ingmen in practically every community. The old-time saloon 
has acquired a very unsavory name, and undoubtedly it has 
deserved most of the things that have been said about it. But 
very few of the temperance reformers have, or ever have had, 
any conception of what the saloon meant to the workingman. 

The saloon-keeper had a monopoly of all the small halls in 
the district in which the workingmen lived. The labor unions 
often held their meetings in the back rooms of saloons, for 
which they rarely paid any rent, because the saloon-keepers 
were confident that the men would spend their money before, 
during, and after the meetings in sufficient quantities to make 
it worth while. 

It was in the saloon that the workingmen in those days 
held their christening parties, their weddings, their dances, 
their rehearsals for their singing societies, and all other social 


48 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


functions. It was here that they were given opportunity to 
play billiards, pool, and cards; and often there was a bowling 
alley. Sometimes there was a gymnasium. In most cases 
the customers were freely supplied with newspapers. Music 
was furnished, especially in connection with summer gardens. 
More important than most of us think was the free lunch 
that was offered with a schooner of beer. 

Undoubtedly, however, the chief element of attraction was 
the saloon-keeper himself. Prohibition agitators who pictured 
the saloon-keeper as a low-browed brute simply did not under- 
stand his relationship to the average workingman, and the 
workingmen simply laughed at this characterization. They 
knew better. 

True enough, many of them were all their accusers charged 
them with being. But the average saloon-keeper was more 
than an ordinary retail business man. He was a social force 
-in the community. His greeting was cordial, his appearance 
neat, and his acquaintance large. He had access to sources of 
information which were decidedly beneficial to the men who 
patronized his saloon. Often he secured work for both the 
workingman and his children. I recall that as a young ap- 
prentice, when I was arrested, as already told, the first’ man 
to whom my friends turned was the saloon-keeper on the 
block. And he furnished bail gladly. He was doing it all 
the time. 

He had close affiliation with the dominant political party; 
-he was instrumental in getting the young men of the neigh- 
borhood on the police force and into the fire department, the 
most coveted jobs in the city among my young workmen 
friends. He loaned money without setting up the work basis 
of the Charity Organization Society and similar relief organi- 
zations. No questions were asked as to whether or not the 
recipient was deserving. Frequently he lent “hoping nothing 
in return.” 

He rarely permitted a man to become intoxicated in his 
place of business. In most cases he would permit neither 
swearing nor gambling. Usually his family belonged to one 
of the community churches, and they were not all of them 


BOSS AND THE BARKEEPER 49 


Catholics, either, as is often supposed. In later years, when 
I became a preacher, few greeted me more cordially than the 
saloon-keeper when I made my pastoral calls in his home. 
The Salvation Army lassie was never turned away; and woe 
betide the man in the saloon who tried to insult her! No 
wonder that the workingman smiled at the caricatures of the 
man whom he knew to be so very human and who was often 
one of his best friends. 

To be sure, it would be a very easy matter to paint the other 
side of the picture. One could tell of the suffering caused by 
over-indulgence on the part of the individual workingman and 
the hardships which this indulgence caused his wife and chil- 
dren. That is taken for granted. But it is because temperance 
reformers so completely forget the human element in the sa- 
loon business that they have made so little progress in con- 
verting workingmen to the prohibition idea. 

To Clee is to many employers of labor the A AaHaA bie. 
sin. I recall in the main office of the shop in which I worked 
a photograph. Beneath the picture, in the narrow margin of 
the card-mount, was this legend: 


HARRY JONES 
Oldest employee in the Works. 
Born in Wales Sept. 4, 1827 
Entered our employ Oct. 1, 1843 
HE NEVER WENT OUT ON STRIKE 


That was undoubtedly a fine record. To have been with 
the same concern so many years meant a great deal both to 
the firm and to the workman. But I confess I never could see 
the supreme virtue of remaining at work when a strike was 
justifiable—and there were undoubtedly occasions when it be- 
came necessary to protest in this fashion in order to better 
the conditions of workingmen, unless, of course, some fair 
means had been agreed upon whereby industrial differences 
could be arbitrated. 

Anyway, a psychological situation is developed during an 
industrial conflict which inevitably grips practically every work- 


50 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


ingman concerned. One day the conductors and drivers of 
the old Grand Street line went out on strike. The utmost con- 
fusion reigned. According to the law, the company was com- 
pelled to run at least one street car a day over the line of its 
franchise. The strikers were determined that this should not 
be done. They piled trucks upon the tracks and in every way 
possible obstructed the course of the street car. In spite of 
police protection furnished by the city, every street car that 
attempted to make the trip had its windows smashed. In sev- 
eral cases the street cars themselves were turned upside down 
and laid upon the tracks. 

This, of course, was highly exciting to us apprentices. One 
day all the apprentices in the shop resolved to take the after- 
noon off to see the fun. We followed the street car across the 
city, trailing behind the mob of strikers. I recall, once when 
the strikers were chased by a large force of policemen, that I 
was thrown down and my thumb was mashed by the heel of 
a husky driver. But I continued with the rest of the appren- 
tices until we saw that street car through to its finish. 

We had been warned by the bosses that if we left the shop 
that afternoon we would all be discharged, but the fever was 
in our blood; we cared nothing about being discharged, under 
the circumstances. Actually, none of us lost his job. When 
the superintendent was asked why he did not make good his 
threat, he simply:smiled. He was a good psychologist. He 
understood that it was simply impossible for the boys to have 
remained at their machines overlooking Grand Street and see 
the mob pass by, with all the thrill of a baseball game, a fight, 
and a struggle to get more wages combined calling them to 
come on and have a part in it all. 

I have rarely met a workingman who envied the rich man 
his wealth; but I have known many of them who coveted his 
leisure, the chance to see things and to enjoy them. During 
the last few years that I worked in the n.achine shop I ran a 
planing-machine down in the basement underneath the side- 
walk. The only daylight that I saw came through a tiny win- 
dow, except when occasionally the back door leading into the 


BOSS AND THE BARKEEPER 51 


yard was opened. I worked ten hours a day, with no half- 
holiday on Saturday. 

Living in East New York, which was then the extreme end 
of Brooklyn, across the river, I was compelled to get up at 
5:30 in the morning, and I never reached home until about 
7:30. Although I thoroughly enjoyed my job as a machinist 
and truly was eager to get back at it in the morning, because 
there was a constant thrill about the new jobs that came along 
and because I was eager to excel, I greatly missed the oppor- 
tunity to visit places in and about New York which I wanted 
so much to see. | 

So one day I broached the subject to the boss and told him 
that I wanted two afternoons a week off. I realized that this 
was an unusual request to make, but I saw no other way of 
getting the time unless I left the job. Finally he agreed. 
Furthermore, he astonished me by saying that he would raise 
my wages sufficiently so that there would be no actual money 
loss on account of the time taken off those two afternoons. 

When the old-fashioned bell rang at twelve o’clock on those 
days and I had pulled off my overalls, put them into my tool 
chest, and quickly eaten my lunch of bologna sausage, rye 
bread, and three or four apples, I followed my prearranged 
schedule, visiting art galleries or museums, going to lectures, 
or just roaming about the city. It was a grand and glorious 
feeling to realize that I actually had some time which was 
my own, so that I could go where I pleased. 

The only diploma which I have ever received from any in- 
stitution is a finely engraved apprenticeship certificate, signed 
by the head of R. Hoe & Company, indicating the depart- 
ments of work in which I was employed during my appren- 
ticeship and giving my personal rating as “superior work- 
man.” It holds a prominent place in my office. 

It states that I spent five years in my term of apprentice- 
ship, from June 15, 1885, to June 15, 1890. ‘Those years, to- 
gether with my three years as a journeyman, constituted a 
background of education in the day-by-day problems of work- 
ingmen which has since been most valuable to me. That big 


52 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


machine shop actually became my training school, my univer- 
sity, my seminary. I am rather proud of the title “superior 
workman.” I think I earned it fairly. Whatever else I may 
have done since the day I received my diploma as a graduate 
machinist has been based upon the broad education received 
among two thousand highly skilled workmen, among whom 
there was just as great a variety of opinion and human expe- 
rience as one can find almost anywhere else in the world. 


VI 


BREAKING INTO THE MINISTRY 
Wi I decided to become a preacher, I received abso- 


lutely no encouragement frona anybody. One woman, 
who had known me a long time, said rather doubtfully that if 
I should go to college for four years and to a theological semi- 
nary for three years more, I might be acceptable in some little | 
country church “where they weren’t very particular.” She 
emphatically declared that I would never make a good public 
speaker. 

When I told the superintendent of the shop in which I was 
working that I was going to quit and take a course of study 
in preparation for the “Gospel ministry,” he called me a fool. 
He offered me a job as his assistant if I would remain. 

I confess that that stumped me, because all my preparation 
had been for that kind of job; and I was made particularly 
uncomfortable when he reminded me that there was no limit 
to my chances in the shop, that there was no reason why I 
might not succeed him. I asked him for a week to think about 
his proposal, during which period I went through many kinds 
and degrees of mental torture, because here was the very thing 
being offered me that I had wanted all during my machinist 
days. He insisted that I could do just as much good as the 
head of this big plant as I could possibly do as a preacher in 
any church in America. 

At the end of a week I went back and told him that my 
mind was made up. I was going to preach! 

I hadn’t saved a dollar to pay my expenses. I had to bor- 
row twenty-five dollars to go to Chicago to the Moody Bible 
Institute, where I was to take a course of study in the Eng- 
lish Bible, and I bought an extra low linen collar so that I 
could sit up more comfortably for two nights in a day coach 


instead of riding in the more expensive Pullman car. 
53 


54 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


Work assigned me by the Institute managers in considera- 
tion of a “scholarship” paying sixteen dollars a month re- 
quired all the time I could spare from my studies. 

And so I lived most meagerly with my wife and two-year- 
old son in a single room in the attic of a rooming-house on 
North Wells Street. Our most sumptuous meal during the 
week was obtained on Monday afternoon, when we all visited 
a big department store on State Street, “tasting’’ the samples 
offered customers in the grocery department. I confess that 
my mind often went back with longing to that superintendent’s 
job; he had told me that I might return any time and claim 
it if I “got tired preaching.” 

I had a most loyal supporter in a fellow-officer in a church 
in Brooklyn in which we were both active workers, Jans F. 
Bidstrup, an electrical engineer, but not a man of very great 
wealth. He helped raise the money to pay the expense of a 
little mission I conducted, and when I went to the Moody In- 
stitute, he regularly sent me every month a check for forty 
dollars during the time that I was studying there. He had 
promised to do this before I left New York, but I didn’t hear 
from him for three months. I almost lost faith in my friend’s 
promise until one day a letter was received containing checks 
for four consecutive months—each of them dated back to cover 
the whole period.. My friend Mr. Bidstrup wrote me that he 
had an old man in his employ who, it developed, in posting his 
letters had regularly deposited them in an old box at the end 
of the hall, and it was not until he had received many inquiries 
about mail that Mr. Bidstrup finally discovered what had be- 
come of many of his personal letters. When he opened the 
box he was amazed to find it stacked full of his mail, and 
among it were the three letters addressed to me each contain- 
ing a check for the months during which I had failed to hear 
from him. Naturally this was a very trying experience, for 
I had banked heavily on the money that had been promised 
me. But there was a season of great rejoicing in our little 
attic “apartment” when that bunch of checks arrived. 

I think that what tried me most at this time of deprivation 
was an experience with a “‘pan-handler.’’ We had been taught 


BREAKING INTO THE MINISTRY 55 


by the Institute instructors to take the words of the Bible lit- 
erally, and special emphasis was put upon the injunction, ‘“‘Give 
to him that asketh thee.” So when this beggar asked me for 
the price of a square meal, I gave him a quarter, all the money 
I had in my pocket. I followed him around the corner to see 
what he would do, although doing such a thing seemed almost 
like questioning the Bible. I saw him buy a big bag of cherries 
for twenty cents and jump onto a street car going downtown. 
I watched him until he was out of sight, leisurely eating those 
nice big red cherries—I who had felt unable to afford to buy 
even a nickel’s worth! 

My going to the Moody Institute in Chicago was really the 
climax of a series of attempts to break into the ministry. I | 
had successively tried to get into Princeton, Union, and Mc- 
Cormick Theological Seminaries, all Presbyterian schools; but 
none of them would have me. I finally tried Drew Seminary, 
which was a Methodist school, and where I had heard that, 
at that time at least, the requirements of admission were not 
so high. But even Drew turned me down. The president 
wrote me in substance that I didn’t know enough—which, of 
course, I knew; that was why I wanted to go to the school. I 
knew mathematics and mechanical drawing and mechanics, but 
of what use were these in a theological seminary? 

Before making application to these seminaries I had honestly. 
tried to study at least some of the things which would fit me 
to take theological instruction. I had studied Latin with a 
Jewish peddler, Greek with a Brooklyn lawyer, and Hebrew 
in an extension course, and I could read each of those lan- 
guages fairly well. Besides that I had had a great deal of 
practical experience in religious work. I had been an “elder”’ 
in the Presbyterian Church—elected when I was twenty-one, 
—superintendent of a Sunday school, a Bible-class teacher, a 
member of the Board of Managers of the Young Men’s Chris- 
tian Association, Vice-President of the Brooklyn Sunday 
School Union, and organizer and conductor of a mission on 
the outskirts of Brooklyn. But I couldn’t prove that I was 
“regular.” 

While the theological seminaries were deeply immersed in 


56 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


the study of the Amalekites, the Hittites, and the Jebusites, I 
had been busy getting acquainted with the Brooklynites, the 
Chicagoites, and the Buffaloites. I didn’t realize it at the 
time, but that was a pretty good preparation for the work that 
I wanted to do—to preach to workingmen. 

Also, I discovered later, that when the graduates at the 
seminaries preached about the social conditions of those very 
interesting people who lived thousands of years ago, they were 
regarded as perfectly orthodox. But when I began to preach 
about the social problems of the Pittsburghites, for example, 
discussing almost precisely the same questions that confronted 
the ancients, I was somewhat rudely reminded that I might 
better preach the “simple Gospel’—whatever that might be. 
However, I felt that the Pittsburghites needed my messages 
very much more, because the Amalekites had been a long time 
dead! 

Somehow, I never could get away from this very practical 
situation, and it got me into trouble at the Moody Institute. I 
had always been a conservative in my theological beliefs, but 
I was not very familiar with many of the doctrines taught 
at the school, simply because in New York I had never so 
much as heard of them. 

Much was said about the “second blessing.” I was anxious 
to get this added gift. So when it was announced that an all- 
night prayer-meeting of.the four hundred students would be 
held to pray for this blessing, I eagerly attended. There was a 
great deal of singing and much exhortation until midnight, and 
then they all fell upon their knees and audible prayer began. 
In about an hour student after student joyously arose and 
shouted that he “claimed the promise,” that he had “received 
the blessing.” I couldn’t see it. I remained on my knees until 
about four o’clock in the morning. Meanwhile, the leader 
stood over me—TI had taken a seat up front, so that I could 
see and hear everything, for I certainly wanted that gift if it 
was for me—and he berated me for my lack of faith. I was 
made a subject of special prayer. I honestly felt that I needed 
it. But I realized that honesty was better than having the 
approval of the Faculty. 


BREAKING INTO THE MINISTRY 57 


But I hasten to say that the ten months spent at the school 
which Dwight L. Moody founded were actually a wonderful 
experience forme. While much of the teaching seemed unreal _ 
and artificial, the basic teaching of the Bible was most helpful, 
and this was what I needed. Dr. W. W. White, now President 
of Biblical Seminary in New York, was the teacher of Old 
Testament at the Institute, and his sanity and enthusiasm 
spurred me on to make a number of highly interesting original 
studies—and I often spent most of the night chasing an Old 
Testament character through the Bible. I have always felt 
grateful to Moody Institute for knocking out of me the con- 
servatism in my methods of work, particularly in reaching peo- 
ple with the Gospel message, although, compared with the aver- 
age church worker, I would have been considered a radical. 

One evening shortly after I had arrived at the Institute, I 
was standing at the main entrance just as the crews of the 
Institute’s open-air workers were going out to hold street 
meetings in various parts of the city. One of the crews hap- 
pened to be a man short, and I was asked if I would not like 
to go with them. I thought it rather amusing because I never 
had had much use for street preachers. I had always supposed 
that they consisted mainly of cranky long-haired men and 
short-haired women. But I had come to the Institute for new 
experiences, and this evidently was to be one of them. They 
took me to West Madison Street, just across the river, at that 
time one of the toughest parts of Chicago. Timidly I took 
my place on the inside of the semicircle of Institute workers, 
desperately afraid that something was going to happen. 

It did. Suddenly the leader pointed to me, and then yelled 
to the crowd: “We've got a man here from New York. [’m 
going to ask him to speak.” 

I was nearly paralyzed. I had made absolutely no prepara- 
tion for giving an address of any kind. I have a vague recol- 
lection of saying something about Niagara Falls and the Rock 
of Ages. I had passed Niagara Falls in coming from New 
York a couple of days before, and it was the one thing that 
stood out before my mind in that awful moment. But when 
I stepped back it was with a distinct consciousness that I had 


58 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


definitely conquered that awful sense of timidity. Thereafter 
there was always a thrill for me in talking to a crowd on the 
street. 1 found that it was easy to do it if one had a sense 
of humor and downright earnestness. In fact, it was much 
easier to speak on the streets than it was in an ordinary church 
with an audience consisting of smug, self-satisfied people. 

Once, when I was a very small boy on the East Side of New 
York, the marshal of a parade held by an athletic and social 
club permitted me to sit on his horse’s back for about three 
minutes. It was a big, fat truck horse. That was the extent 
of my experience as a horseman. But another horse, an Indian 
pony, became an integral part of my first Gospel mission after 
a year of study. When summer came with its vacation period, 
I had a chance to go to northern Minnesota to organize Sunday 
schools in sparsely settled districts. The State superintendent 
in Minneapolis told me where I could find the animal which was 
to be mine for the summer. I was to buy a cart and some 
harness for the pony. 

But that first day I rode the pony thirty miles across the 
prairies to another point which was to be my headquarters, 
with only a meal-bag saddle which the farmer who had loaned 
me the horse had kindly tied on his back. Neither lash nor 
lung could increase the pony’s gait to more than five miles an 
hour. As I did not dismount from the time I started until I 
reached my destination some seven or eight hours later, my 
initial experience with the “missionary” pony left me with 
some very tender recollections. 

In due time my two-wheel cart and harness arrived. The 
harness was about four sizes too large for my little pony, but 
a sharp knife soon fixed that. The cart had never been put 
together. It had been built by “sauge.” When I tried to 
assemble the parts, I found that the wheels fitted the axles, but 
that was about all. It required the assistance of a blacksmith 
to get the rest of the wagon together, because some of the 
bolt holes were half an inch out of the way. To make matters 
worse, the farmer who had been caring for the pony said that 
he had not been used during the past year—it was his sabbatical 
year, or something—and of course the pony was not accus- 


BREAKING INTO THE MINISTRY 59 


tomed to this new-fangled cart. I couldn’t understand at first 
just what his peculiar movements meant. It was a cross 
between the strut of a peacock and the balk of a Missouri mule. 
However, we soon got used to each other and got along fairly 
well. 

After that my troubles were not with the pony, but with 
stubborn school boards, for practically all my Sunday schools 
were organized in schoolhouses. My first job was to canvass 
the entire community and ask the neighbors if they would 
not like to have a meeting in the schoolhouse that night. Of 
course they all said ““Yes”—anything for a change and a bit of 
excitement. Then I tackled the school board and told them that 
all the people wanted a meeting, and inveigled permission from 
them to use the schoolhouse, despite the protests evoked by 
their religious prejudices. I organized a school about every 
night in the week, and I found at the end of the season that [ 
had organized more Sunday schools in northern Minnesota 
than the five regular missionaries in the rest of the State com- 
bined. The real job in organizing Sunday schools, I found 
afterwards, was to keep them going. I guess these sturdy 
experienced missionaries had learned that it was better to 
organize fewer schools and to keep them organized. At any 
rate, | was out to organize them and not to follow them up, 
and I did this job to the best of my ability. 

One day I had been traveling along through an unusually 
sparsely settled section of country. I had not seen a house 
nor a person for many miles. Night came on. It was high 
time that my pony and I should put up somewhere. Finally 
I spied a light shining through the window of a house on the 
top of a hill. I rapped at the door and to my amazement there 
appeared a man in clerical garb. I told him that I was a 
Sunday-school missionary wanting a place to spend the night 
and stable-room for my pony. He looked at me rather sus- 
piciously for a moment and finally asked, “What denomina- 
tion?” I replied, “Presbyterian.” “All right,” he said, “come 
in.” He was a Lutheran. 

After I had washed up, I entered the dining room, where 
I found a well-prepared supper on the table. I waited a long 


60 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


time for some one to invite me to sit down to-the meal, but as 
no one appeared, I finally ate alone. The Lutheran preacher 
had told me that he would take care of my horse, so I went to 
bed. The next morning I ate my breakfast alone, seeing no one 
about the house, and when I had finished my meal, I found 
my pony hitched up to my little cart, just outside the front door, 
and I continued my journey, but my host gave me no chance to 
thank him for his hospitality. 

On my way back to Chicago I stopped at Minneapolis to 
meet the chairman and superintendent of the Sunday School 
Committee. Apparently, the chairman, a prominent lumber- 
man, was impressed with the record that I had made. He told 
me about a mission chapel in the northern part of the city, close 
to the Mississippi River, and that he needed some one to take 
charge of it. He offered me the position. The field seemed to 
offer such unusual opportunities for speaking to workingmen 
and their families that I promptly accepted his proposal. 

After I had been at work for a month, I suggested to the 
officers in charge—men who belonged to the “home church” 
which supported the chapel—a program of work which I 
thought should be carried out. They simply smiled at me. 
They reminded me that I had been in the field only a month, 
whereas they had been there many years, some of them as 
long as twenty, and that I had better wait until I knew more 
about the conditions in the community before taking such 
very drastic measures as I had outlined. 

Without saying a word to anybody, I began to make a 
thorough canvass of the entire community, visiting every 
family in the parish, which covered an area about two miles 
long and half a mile wide. I made about a hundred calls a day. 
When I had finished, I was the absolute master of my field. 
I knew the situation in practically every house. I knew exactly 
how many people lived in the district, what were their nation- 
alities, their religious beliefs, their trades, ages, birthplaces, 
whether or not they attended church, and which of the children 
went to Sunday school and to public school. All of this 
statistical material was placed upon a series of charts, and the 
data graphically displayed on the walls of my study in the 


BREAKING INTO THE MINISTRY 61 


church, Then I called another meeting of the officials. I was 
so full of the subject that without looking at the charts I could 
give exact figures on all of the points which I discussed. 
Needless to say, my church officials were amazed, and when I 
again proposed my plans they had nothing further to say. 

From that time forth every department of work organized 
in the church was based upon an actual situation which was 
demonstrable. I knew, for example, when I organized a boys’ 
club, just about how many boys were eligible for membership. 
Actually, about five hundred of them Lae members of this 
club, which was open every night in the week and consisted 
almost entirely of newsboys and bootblacks. Every week I 
gave a stereopticon lecture consisting of about sixty slides. 
My subjects were most ambitious: “The Life of Napoleon,” 
“A Trip to the North Pole,” the story of “Ben Hur,” “From 
New York to San Francisco.” A few months after I arrived 
in Minneapolis I acquired the reputation of being a “virile, 
red-blooded” kind of preacher because one day I stopped a team 
of heavy truck horses which was tearing down one of the 
main streets of the city, smashing everything that stood in the 
way. Covered with mud, I was interviewed by a reporter 
from one of the local newspapers who wrote a most interesting 
account of the affair. I think the story of this event helped me 
a great deal with the street boys who later joined my club at 
the Chapel. JI had simply to raise my hand to restore quiet 
when a mob of some hundreds had taken the bit in their mouths 
and were running away with the caretakers at the club. The 
first regular sermon that I delivered was written out word 
for word. But I never had the chance to write another 
sermon. During the first week I had three funerals, and I 
created a new address for each occasion. I thought that I had 
been putting in a pretty good day’s work when I was a ma- 
chinist; but the hours of labor in this first church of mine 
were much longer than any I had ever worked in a machine 
shop. In a short time there were thirty meetings a week in 
operation. The big gallery in the church was being used for 
the first time since the building had been erected. 

The people in the neighborhood were so poor that they 


62 A. SON OF THE BOWERY 


could not afford to pay doctor’s fees nor buy medicine, and so 
I organized a free dispensary. Ten dollars put in a complete 
supply of necessary drugs purchased at wholesale prices. Ten 
cents was charged for each prescription, and while sometimes 
the medicine, even though purchased at wholesale, cost us much 
more than this, the average prescription cost us just a few 
cents. Of course, we paid the doctor nothing. 

I had always been enthusiastic about good music and while 
at the Moody Institute I took some special courses in vocal 
training, sight reading and chorus conducting. It had been 
thoroughly drilled into us that only those who were actually 
living a Christian life and were members of the church were 
eligible to lead the people in song. When I came to the 
Minneapolis Chapel, I found that a choir of about a dozen 
voices had the right of way, but that practically all of them 
were deficient in the requirements and standards of a church 
chorister, which I had been taught, and so, in a perfectly reck- 
less fashion and without consulting anybody, I announced one 
Sunday that on the following night a choir would be organized 
and that two requirements would be made of each applicant: 
First, he must be able to sing; and second, he must be a pro- 
fessing Christian. One little hunchback girl alone appeared for 
the nucleus of my Christian choir, and she did not have much 
of avoice. Needless to say, no choir was organized that night. 

On the following Sunday I took personal charge of the 
music. I sang all the solos and conducted the congregational 
singing. Naturally, my action in dismissing the old choir 
created a good deal of discussion, not to say much hard 
feeling, but I was determined to see the thing through, and 
for a year the Sunday services of that church were personally 
conducted by me in every respect. At the end of that time, 
when many new people had come into the church, I succeeded 
in organizing a new choir. A Socialist barber was engaged 
to take charge of the music. 

Not being ordained, I could not baptize the babies, officiate 
at weddings, or administer the communion. One Sunday 
night the preacher who was “pinch-hitting” for me in one of 
these functions looked admiringly over the big audience, and 


BREAKING INTO THE MINISTRY 63 


remarked with a tone of satisfaction: “Well, brother, things 
are going on so well now, I guess we'll have to call a regular 
preacher pretty soon, won’t we?” I agreed with him. I think 
I said “Yeah,” in true East Side fashion. At any rate, that 
was the way I felt. They had already tried out half a dozen 
“regular preachers,” besides a Salvation Army captain and a 
well-known evangelist, but they had all failed. If things hadn’t 
been so run down, they would never have risked letting loose a 
student-preacher, who had a long way to go before he could 
be ordained. But I remained two years, and had a happy time 
working with the sawmill men and their families. Perhaps the 
thing which I enjoyed most of all in that enterprise was the 
big boys’ club. I looked in on it at least every night. When- 
ever I could, I spent the entire evening with those youngsters, 
who reminded me more than anything else of the East Side 
of New York, where my heart was fixed all the time. 

And one day I was invited to come back to New York to 
become the pastor of the same chapel in which I had been raised. 
I didn’t require much coaxing to accept that “call.” I didn’t 
ask much about salary or other conditions. I simply went. I 
wanted to get back to New York. 

The half-dozen years since I had left New York had made 
a good many changes in the neighborhood. I saw at once 
that if the work were to succeed it meant making some very 
drastic changes in methods. But I was blandly told by my 
old friend, the superintendent of the Sunday school, who had 
said I would never make a preacher because my English had 
been so badly neglected, that there were to be no “innova- 
tions.” He practically supported the chapel, and what he said 
was law. This business of “home church membership” was 
a farce. None of the chapel people was ever invited to a busi- 
ness meeting of the home church, even though legally they were 
members of the church. They had nothing whatever to say, 
not even with reference to the chapel which they attended and 
helped support. There was not the slightest trace of democracy 
in the management of affairs. No wonder it was hard to get 
workingmen to take an interest in that kind of enterprise! 
One day the people of Hope Chapel heard that there was 


64 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


to be a regular business meeting of the church, which all con- 
tributing members had a right to attend. A considerable num- 
ber decided to go to that meeting to see what their member- 
ship really amounted to. Now the average church business 
meeting is very poorly attended by the “regular” members, 
so that when these downtown East Side people walked into 
the lecture hall, the minister who was presiding, seeing that 
the chapel people outnumbered the home church folks, and 
fearing that the East-Siders might out-vote his own crowd, 
promptly announced that the meeting was adjourned. It was 
just the kind of place in which I wanted to work out my ideas 
of what a church in a workingman’s district ought to be like. 
But my hands were tied. It was altogether hopeless. 

Soon I resigned, and went to St. Louis to the old Soulard 
Market Mission, which had been organized by William He 
Markham, a business man of the city. It was an ideal situa- 
tion. ‘The leaders and workers were most enthusiastic and 
sympathetic toward my methods. I had practically a free 
hand. Dr. W. J. McKittrick, who was my boyhood pastor— 
the one who first took me to a professional baseball game in 
New York—was the minister in charge of the First Presby- 
terian Church in St. Louis. Through his hearty cooperation, 
a wealthy woman of the city was persuaded to give me annually 
three thousand dollars which I was to spend as I pleased for 
any “extra things” that I wanted to do, in addition to the 
regular funds for the support of ‘the church. The right to 
spend some hundreds of dollars at any one time without being 
compelled to go through the formality of consulting com- 
mittees gave me a chance to act quickly when I saw the 
necessity for doing so. 

A local governing committee, with workingmen represented, 
was organized, and as soon as possible the mission was turned 
into a full-fledged church, with a complete set of officers. Very 
shortly thereafter I was ordained by the St. Louis Presbytery, 
after having preached for five years as a layman. During all 
that time I had been studying hard to pass the examinations. 
When the time came, in spite of the fact that I was grilled for 
four hours on all kinds of theological questions by a group 


BREAKING INTO THE MINISTRY 65 


which was not altogether sympathetic with my radical methods 
of work, it was a real pleasure to have the presiding officer 
at my ordination service tell the audience that no candidate, 
including those who were graduates of regular theological 
seminaries, had passed his examination more creditably. 

I worked tremendously hard to put through a real program 
for the community. We had the biggest Sunday school west of 
the Mississippi River—lI recall that there were four hundred 
in the primary department alone—and the largest Sunday night 
congregation in St. Louis. During the entire summer tent 
meetings were held in a lot near the church, which were at- 
tended by about a thousand people every night in the week. 
More people joined our church than became members of any 
other church in the city. Fully two hundred and fifty members 
belonged to the young people’s societies. There were thrée 
choirs of a hundred voices, a cooking class of seventy-two, and 
eight “cottage meetings” every week in the homes of the people. 
It was a real people’s church, and I was proud to be its 
pastor. 


VII 
PIONEERING WITH CHURCH AND LABOR 


or HE Workingman and the Westminster Confession of 

Faith” was the title of an address which I was invited 
to make in Joplin, Missouri, on the occasion of the celebration 
of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the adoption 
of that creed. Of course, most workingmen never knew that 
there was such a thing as a Westminster Confession of Faith, 
and those who did cared mighty little about it. They were not 
so much concerned about the glorious traditions of the Church 
as they were about what the Church was doing here and now. 

At about that time, the Confession of Faith was beginning 
to make a lot of trouble for the Presbyterians. It was the 
beginning of the fundamentalist controversy which has since 
assumed such large proportions, and why the workingmen 
should be dragged into this business I did not know. I half 
suspect that the reason this subject was assigned to me was 
because somebody on the program'committee who knew of my 
interest in workingmen, was anxious to have me speak in 
Joplin, which was a mining town in southwestern Missouri, 
and as the main theme was the Confession of Faith, they 
simply hitched the two things together and thus provided a sub- 
ject, or perhaps an excuse for my speaking. 

In the course of my address I remarked that, although very 
few workingmen seemed to be attending the churches of Joplin, 
the streets were thronged with them. Speaking out of my 
experience in tent and open-air preaching, I suggested that the 
churches might well go after the men who had declined to 
come to them. 

“Will you conduct such a meeting on the streets of Joplin 
to-night?’ shouted somebody in the audience. 

“Yes, I will, if you will go with me,” I replied. 

66 


CHURCH AND LABOR 67 


Immediately a dozen others volunteered, and when ‘the 
dignified body of Presbyterian ministers from all over the State 
adjourned that afternoon it was to reconvene at seven o’clock 
that evening on a certain street corner in Joplin, where I was 
to conduct an open-air meeting. As I stood on the seat of a 
big barouche, or carriage, which somebody had furnished, I 
faced hundreds of miners who had first been attracted by 
the playing of a cornet which I had insisted should constitute 
the music for the occasion. Mingled with the miners were 
the preachers. 

Just as I was to begin my address my eye rested on the sign 
of a clothing dealer whose name was “Gottlieb.’’ Pointing 
to the sign, I told my audience that that was to be my text, 
namely, the love of God. And the Jewish storekeeper, who 
stood in his doorway, smilingly nodded, and said, “Dot’s right.” 

One man who stood on the outskirts of the crowd, one of the 
National secretaries of the Presbyterian Board of Home Mis- 
sions, had come all the way from New York to bring his 
greetings to the meeting. At the afternoon session he accepted 
my challenge when I said: “If there were time, I would like 
to tell you what I think the National Presbyterian Church 
should do in connection with the problem of the workingman.” 

“Tell us,’ shouted the secretary, Dr. John Dixon, and 
quickly I outlined some of the things which I thought should 
be done, perhaps by the Board which he represented. Dr. 
Dixon and I talked the thing out that afternoon. The result 
was that I was invited to come to New York by Dr. Charles 
L. Thompson, the General Secretary of the Board. For three 
days we talked out every possible angle of what I had proposed, 
and it was finally agreed that I was to spend six months on the 
field trying out my plan. 

The first place I visited was Minneapolis. The difficulties of 
beginning at the point where I had begun my work as a student- 
preacher were perfectly obvious; but I had the advantage of 
knowing the city. Without very much preparation or an- 
nouncement I landed in Minneapolis, to remain in the city for 
a month. Frankly, I was not greeted with open arms by the 
churches and preachers. They thought that I had come to 


68 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


impose something upon them which they neither understood nor 
desired. 

Sufficient pressure had been brought to bear upon the leading 
church in the city to permit me to give an illustrated lecture. 
But before I was allowed to deliver that address, not only was 
my manuscript censored by a professor in the Law Department 
of the University of Minnesota, but even the ticket of admis- 
sion which I had drawn up needed to have his approval. It 
was probably supposed that I was to present some radical So- 
cialistic or Anarchistic doctrine which I was going to ask the 
churches to advocate in order to win workingmen. It was 
with the utmost difficulty that I secured a hearing in a few of 
the churches. The situation was so discouraging that it 
seemed to me a waste of time to try to convert the preachers 
to what was to me a very simple proposal and to something 
I had fully demonstrated in my church in St. Louis. 

So I telegraphed the New York office one afternoon that 
it might be better if I moved on to another town, because it 
would take too long to accomplish anything in Minneapolis. 
Scarcely had I sent the telegram, however, when I realized 
that to acknowledge failure at the very beginning was almost 
fatal to the entire undertaking. So I sent a second telegram 
immediately to New York canceling the first. I remained for 
a month. Before I left Minneapolis the preachers in one of 
their regular meetings apologized to me and sent a strong 
resolution to headquarters in New York endorsing the entire 
proposal. But the month’s experience cost me ten pounds in 
weight, lost mostly through sheer anxiety. 

That was not the end of my trials, however. I went next 
to Denver, for at that time Colorado was having its troubles 
with the Western Federation of Miners, with strikes in the 
Cripple Creek district. Dynamiting and murders were almost 
daily occurrences. The “Bull Pen” had been established, and 
the deportation of the strikers, which meant dumping them 
onto the prairie hundreds of miles away and leaving them to 
shift for themselves, was included in the tactics adopted by the 
State Militia to restore peace. 


CHURCH AND LABOR 69 


Naturally, I went to Cripple Creek, attended the meetings 
of the unions, went down into the mines, talked with all classes 
of people, and formed my own conclusions. Then I came back 
to Denver and tried to make some appointments in the churches. 

It was rather curious that while I was in the Cripple Creek 
district the churches were afraid that in my public addresses 
I might antagonize labor; but when I arrived in Denver the 
churches were afraid that I might antagonize the employers. 
However, I spent a couple of weeks in Denver, speaking in 
many of the churches. But when it came to paying my local 
expenses, which, divided among the churches where I had 
spoken would have amounted to a very small sum, the preachers 
were disinclined to ask their official boards to contribute money 
for the purpose. Even the Y. M. C. A. balked at paying a 
bill for three dollars for hiring chairs for the mass-meeting 
which I had addressed in their hall on Sunday afternoon, dis- 
claiming all responsibility for the meeting. The arrangements 
therefor had been made by an individual workman, who, I 
recall, was a Christian Scientist and a Socialist. 

One employer of labor declared that I was a detective in 
the employ of the American Federation of Labor assuming 
the guise of a Presbyterian preacher. Some of the newspapers 
openly antagonized my mission, although actually I said very 
little about local issues, but tried to deal with the broader prin- 
ciples of the interest of the Church in modern industrial prob- 
lems. Apparently the only group that believed in my sincerity 
of purpose and in the genuineness and value of my work was 
the trade-unionists. Nor was this interest on the part of the 
workingmen secured by playing up to them. I spoke to the 
workingmen in their labor halls as plainly as I could regarding 
their responsibility toward their employers, the Church, and 
the community. But they also knew that I was talking as 
frankly to the other crowd about their responsibility, and they 
felt confident that I was not trying to deceive them. 

My study of the entire situation in Colorado at that time 
convinced me that both sides in the controversy were wrong; 
that the labor unions were as much to blame as the employers ; 


70 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


that citizens’ alliances and similar organizations were guilty of 
breaking the law just as frequently as were the trade-unionists 
or those who represented them. 

I wrote several articles to that effect for the leading Presby- 
terian paper. The result was that headquarters in New York 
received several letters of protest from leading Colorado 
Presbyterians, objecting to my literary efforts. One of them, 
a man of considerable wealth, declared indignantly that here- 
after he would do his own home mission work if the Board was 
going to send an “agitator of social unrest” into the State to 
stir up things. 

“Big Bill’ Haywood, who has since gone to Russia to help 
the Soviet government organize its industrial plan, was in 
charge of the Cripple Creek strike; as head of the Western 
Federation of Miners. I recall a three-hour interview which I 
had with him in his office in Denver. His single eye blazed 
with indignation as he showed me a card which he said was 
being given to the scab workers in the mines, entitling them 
to jobs. He thought that the height of imperialism and tyr- 
anny. It probably never occurred to him that the employers 
of labor looked upon the union card which his organization 
issued in much the same light. 

Some time later, while I was in Chicago conducting a cam- 
paign in that city, [| saw Haywood on the street with some 
other officials of the Western Federation of Miners, and sev- 
eral other radical labor leaders, heading for a hall, evidently for 
the purpose of attending a meeting. I followed them upstairs. 
That day the Industrial Workers of the World was organized 
upon the idea of “the one big union.” The original plan of the 
I. W. W. was to organize all workers engaged in a particular 
industry into a single union, no matter what their trade, instead 
of forming separate trade unions in each industry. This was 
much like the old Knights of Labor, which was superseded by 
the American Federation of Labor, the latter standing dis- 
tinctly for the “trade” union, as over against the “industrial” 
union. 

Pittsburgh was my next point of attack. It can readily be 
seen that my managers were putting me through a rather severe 


CHURCH AND LABOR © 71 


test, for Pittsburgh is about as sensitive a city as one can find | 
in this country when it comes to.a discussion of labor and its 
problems, particularly in the steel and iron industries. After I 
had addressed the preachers’ meeting in that city on a subject 
which was entirely foreign to the labor union, one of the leaders 
arose and said: 

“Do you mean to say that if the union wages are four dollars 
a day, that I as an American citizen haven't the right to work 
for three dollars a day if I want to?” 

To which I replied: 

“T understand that the Pittsburgh Presbytery has a rule that 
no minister shall be permitted to accept a call and be installed as 
the pastor of any church unless he receives the amount of salary 
which the Presbytery has declared shall be the minimum paid 
to any minister. Now if you can tell me the difference between 
your labor union and the union composed of workingmen, so 
far as union wages are concerned, I will be obliged to you.” 

“T am through,” the preacher said, and sat down. 

On the face of it, there appeared to be a similarity between 
the “closed shop” of the trade unionist and the “closed shop” 
of the preachers, and I found that the workingmen were con- 
stantly charging the preachers with having a “closed shop.” 
I pointed out to them, however, that the preacher had no restric- 
tions placed upon him so far as hours of labor were concerned, 
and that nothing was said about overtime, nor working with 
non-unionists, nor limiting the output, nor the number of ap- 
prentices in his occupation, nor about some of the other trade- 
union features which are usually emphasized in denouncing the 
labor organizations. I tried to show the trade-unionists whom 
I addressed that no organization of preachers had ever tried 
to prohibit any man from preaching if he felt called upon 
to do so. As a matter of fact, I said, some of the greatest 
preachers in the Church had never been ordained—that is, 
given a “union card.” And I referred to such men as Moody 
and Spurgeon, who were outstanding in this respect. Many 
denominations, I informed them, did not require a “union 
card,” but most workingmen, I understood, preferred that the 
preacher who married, and baptized, and administered the 


72 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


sacrament of the Lord’s Supper should have the training, ex- 
perience, and dignity which the Church usually requires of its 
ministers. I declared that only about fifteen to twenty per cent 
of the working people of America were members of labor 
unions, whereas the entire Church was “‘unionized’”’—it was a 
one hundred per cent organization. Of course, I reminded the 
trade-unionists to whom I spoke, that the average salary 
received by the preacher was less than that received by an ordi- 
nary day laborer, in spite of the fact that the preacher usually 
spent twenty years securing his education, including common 
school, college or university, and theological seminary. 

Chicago was the next city on my program. The first meeting 
was held in Bricklayers’ Hall, and I talked there to as rough 
a crowd as I had yet encountered. The subject of my address 
was the moral aspects of the labor question, in which I tried 
to impress upon these avowedly antagonistic workers their 
responsibility in industry. Before I began my formal address 
I had said that questions would be permitted when I finished 
it. While I was waiting for the crowd to assemble a reporter 
who sat before the platform said to me, quietly: 

“Do you see that fellow coming down the aisle? You want 
to watch out for him. He’s a Jew and a Socialist, and if he 
gets a chance, he’ll rip you up the back.” 

At the close of my address he was the first man to rise to his 
feet. With a sneer on his face, he said to me: 

“What’s the use of your talking about the moral aspects of 
the labor question? You know very well that all sin is due 
to poverty. It’s because people are poor that they sin. That’s 
the only reason. Wipe out poverty, and sin will disappear, and 
you know it, but you’re afraid to say so because you think you'll 
lose your job.” 

Which sentiment the crowd most heartily applauded. 

“T suppose you are a Socialist, aren’t you?” I asked him. 

“Yes,” he said, with a vigorous shake of his head. 

“Then I suppose you would say that, according to your 
philosophy, all the millionaires in Chicago are saints, because 
they are not poor.” 

For a moment he seemed stumped. Then the crowd, quick 


CHURCH AND LABOR 73 


to catch the humor of the situation, simply howled with laughter 
at his discomfiture. Before the close of the meeting another 
Socialist in the audience read a paragraph from the current 
issue of a magazine which apparently bitterly antagonized the 
Church. It happened by the merest chance that I had read 
the same article earlier in the day. When he had finished, I 
said to him, “Now read the next paragraph.” He evidently 
did not care to do so, but I insisted. It developed that the 
paragraph which he had read was merely a quotation which the 
following paragraph completely annihilated. The crowd, al- 
though socialistically sympathetic, hooted down the accuser for 
his unfair tactics. 

Another critic at the same meeting began his statement by 
declaring that he believed in the principles of Jesus, and that 
he thought that if these principles were applied to society, all 
the evils under which we were living would disappear—and 
then with a sudden outburst, he shouted: 

“If I had my way, I would send all the capitalists to hell!” 

“My friend,’ I said to him, “you need to go back and learn 
your lesson all over again. You haven’t grasped the first prin- 
ciples that Jesus taught, for Jesus was trying all the time to 
keep people out of hell.” 

It was in the regular meetings of labor unions that I had 
some of my most interesting experiences. One night I attended 
a meeting of a central labor body, consisting of delegates from 
the various local unions in the city. After I had finished my 
address the chairman invited speeches from the floor. He went 
clear around the circle of something like fifty delegates, call- 
ing upon each, in view of the fact that I was a preacher and 
that I had said something about going to church, to explain 
why he himself had not been attending church. Finally, it was 
the turn of the delegate from the Bartenders’ Union. 

“T don’t know whether you fellows have been telling the 
truth about this church business or not,’ he said. ‘Maybe 
you have, but I just want to say for myself that I just plain 
backslid. I was once a Methodist. Now I’m only a bartender. 
I hope you will excuse this sermon, but I wanted to tell you the 
truth about myself. I feel sorry for the preachers in this city. 


74 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


Some of them get only a few hundred dollars a year, and they 
work longer and harder and more hours than we do. They 
ain’t got any cinch.” 

After the meeting this bartender invited me to attend and 
address the regular meeting of his local. This was the first 
time that I had ever gone to a meeting of the bartenders. 
There were many interesting things about that particular meet- 
ing, but the most startling was the fact that it was opened and 
closed with prayer, the members being led by a duly elected 
chaplain, who was one of the regular officers of the union. 

The presiding officer gave three sharp raps with the gavel. 
Instantly, every man was on his feet. The President then 
said: 

“Let us be silent while the Chaplain invokes the Father’s 
aid.” 

And here is the Bartenders’ Prayer: 

‘Be with us, our Father, in this our Convention. Grant us, 
we pray Thee, a part of Thy wisdom that we may pursue the 
path which causes all men to acknowledge the brotherhood of 
man and the Fatherhood of Thee.” 

At the close of the meeting, the President again called the 
delegates to their feet, and said: 

“Let us be silent while the Chaplain offers thanks to the 
Father.” ? 

Then followed this invocation: 

“Thou, O Father, who has created all things as they are, 
now that we are about to quit this circle and mingle again with 
the selfish world, we pray Thee to protect and shield us and 
our work from evil hands, and may we all at last be received 
into the circle of Thy love. Amen.” 

They told me that at a meeting of the union held a short 
time before a bartender had been fined one dollar for saying 
“damn.” The remark was made in all seriousness, and no 
doubt for the purpose of impressing upon me their desire to 
be as decent in speech as most other men are supposed to be. 

At one of the local meetings which I attended it required 
five different interpreters to obligate five candidates. It was 
here that I first learned of the important function of the labor 


CHURCH AND LABOR 75 


unions in this country in Americanizing foreign-speaking work- 
ingmen; for the constant exhortation to secure an education, to 
live in better homes, to buy better clothes, to eat better food, is 
bound to have a good effect upon men who have long been 
satisfied with lower physical conditions. 

Coming out of a theater meeting in Providence, Rhode 
Island, at which I had spoken, at about this time, I was met at 
the door by a man who said that he was the local organizer for 
the Machinists’ Union. We stood on the street corner for two 
hours—he declined to go to my hotel, probably because he 
thought that the conversation would not last very long—and 
I listened to a recital of most dramatic personal experiences. 
Among other things, I recall that he told me he was once a 
Salvation Army captain, but that he felt that he could accom- 
plish more in behalf of the people through the labor movement 
than he could in the Salvation Army or in the church. And 
to-day that man is in a position of great influence as one of 
the outstanding officials in the American labor movement. He 
is William H. Johnston, President of the International Asso- 
ciation of Machinists, one of the strongest and most effective 
labor organizations in the world. 

It was a constant surprise to see how actively leaders in the 
labor unions were also engaged in Christian work. In the 
Cripple Creek district, for example, when the fight was hottest 
between the mine owners and the labor unions, the president of 
the local union was a Presbyterian elder. Indeed, it was quite 
a common thing to find Presbyterian elders and officers in other 
churches who were heads of both local unions and central labor 
bodies, or who were labor editors. 

One day I met in Des Moines, in the office of the local labor 
paper, six men active in the trade union movement in that 
city, every one of whom was an officer in a local Protestant 
church. There were many officials of labor unions who were 
Stunday-school workers and workers in young people’s societies. 
In Canton, Ohio, a local labor official, who was an elder in 
the church, told me that both his father and grandfather held 
similar positions in the church. John Mitchell once told me 
that his father had been a Presbyterian elder. 


76 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


Matt Shay, Acting President of the Locomotive Engineers 
in his division, and who was at that time Chairman of the 
Board of Adjustment of the entire Erie system, was an active 
Methodist. 

I recall meeting a young labor official in an Ohio City, who 
when introduced to me said that he was then looking for a 
preacher who. could fill the pulpit on the coming Sunday of a 
little mission church in which he was interested. He had been 
responsible for conducting the “cottage prayer-meetings”’ in the 
city, one of which was held in the back of a saloon with about 
fifty people present. Evidently he had sold the idea either to 
the saloon-keeper or the saloon-keeper’s wife. 

I was further impressed during my visits from city to city 
with the keen interest of workingmen in the discussion of 
religious problems, although their language was decidedly 
non-ecclesiastical. There was no doubt that at heart they were 
stirred by the religious appeal; more so, indeed, than was 
true of any other group which I addressed. 


VIII 
CAMPAIGNING FOR WORKINGMEN 


Gee. was growing very rapidly among working- 
men during the days that I was pioneering in the Church 
and labor movement. At that time Victor Berger first rep- 
resented Milwaukee in the House of Representatives. I once 
asked him how it was that the Socialists in Milwaukee were 
so successful. He told me that there were hundreds of men, 
members of the Socialist Party, who were pledged to go out 
every Sunday morning to place Socialist literature under the 
front doors of the people living in the district for which they 
had become responsible. They were usually guided in the 
selection of the language of the pamphlets they should leave by 
the Sunday morning newspapers they found on the front 
porch. I have often wondered whether it would be possible to 
secure in any city in America an equal number of churchmen 
who would volunteer to get up at five o’clock in the morning 
for any purpose whatsoever in connection with the work of 
the Church, solely because they felt that the message of Chris- 
tianity was a far more vital message than that contained in 
Socialism. I rather think that the task would be a hopeless 
one. 

Stumbling into a conference of Socialists in Chicago, I found 
that they were discussing the question as to how they had 
been converted to Socialism. Practically every man present 
testified that he had been first attracted to Socialism by some- 
thing that he had read. 

One night I was talking in Carroll College in Waukesha, 
Wisconsin, a Presbyterian school. The President pointed out 
a girl in the audience who he said was a converted Jewess. 
She was then a Senior. He told me she had come from the 
sweatshops of Chicago, that she was a Socialist and that when 


she had finished her course of study she was going back to 
77 





78 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


Chicago as a “Socialist missionary” to tell the working people 
in that city that their economic salvation was in Socialism and 
Socialism alone. This girl, he declared, was about to engage in 
this work in the same spirit and with the same devotion that 
prompted others in the college to go to the foreign field as mis- 
sionaries in behalf of Christianity. 

IT found that about all many preachers could see in the 
modern social movement was a cheap, godless propaganda 
which was destined to fail because, as they said, it had noth- 
ing of the “cross” init. ‘The workingmen think that morality 
and Socialism are the only things that are necessary in this 
life,’’ one preacher said to me. 

One can only say that such a conclusion ignored altogether 
vast areas of experience and conviction on the part of working- 
men, which accounted in a great measure for the failure of 
the Church to interest them in its message. 

There was a foolish fear of Socialism on the part of many 
of the preachers; in fact, everything that seemed to be a bit 
different from the accepted order of things was branded as 
Socialism, and I discovered that comparatively few of the 
critics of Socialism understood what Socialism really was. 
They thought it a good joke to say, when cornered in a dis- 
cussion: 

“There are fifty-seven different kinds of Socialism—what 
kind of Socialism do you refer to?” 

One might easily have reminded them that there are some- 
thing like two hundred and fifty kinds of Protestants in the 
United States. I did not advocate Socialism, nor have I ever 
accepted it as an economic philosophy. But with my audiences 
I had to face it frankly, and I wanted the preachers to under- 
stand that it was necessary for them to realize exactly what 
they were talking about when they criticized Socialism, lest they 
do more harm than good. I reminded them that it was an 
unfair criticism of Socialism which originally drove Karl 
Marx, the founder of modern Socialism, out of the Church. 

In Chicago I was approached by a printer who asked me to 
preside at a most unique baptismal service. This printer was 
the father of a six-months-old child. He told me that he and 


CAMPAIGNING FOR WORKINGMEN 79 


his wife had decided to dedicate their baby to the cause of labor 
in a public service. He said they had invited several labor 
leaders to give addresses and that he himself had prepared the 
entire order of service, with the obligation that he and his 
wife were to assume to bring up their child so that when he 
arrived at years of maturity he would be familiar with the 
labor problem in all of its aspects, and could intelligently and 
in a true Christian spirit go out into the world and fight the 
battles of labor. It was the purpose of this printer to inaugu- 
rate a new religious custom among the trade unions of this 
country, and he hoped that the dedication of his tiny baby 
would be the beginning of a mighty movement for the consecra- 
tion of little children to labor’s cause, just as other mothers and 
fathers were dedicating their children to become ministers and 
missionaries. 

Although I did not preside at this service, another minister 
was found who did so, and it was attended by about five hun- 
dred trade-unionists. Messages were read by some of the 
most prominent labor leaders in America. But nothing ever 
came of the attempt to enlist other parents similarly to con- 
secrate their children, mainly because workingmen, as a class, 
are extremely conservative in matters of religion. 

One of the things that constantly amazed me in contacts 
with national officials and local workers in the field of social 
work was the number of professional social workers who were 
ex-preachers. And they were men who, for the most part, 
would be successful as preachers; and who had not been fail- 
ures in the Church. If they had been men of smaller caliber 
they might have remained in the Church, but they told me very 
frankly that they had a better chance to do a man’s job in the 
social field than they had in the Church—that they were tired 
of spending their time making unnecessary social calls and 
trying to pacify disgruntled members. 

At about this time, Dr. W. D. P. Bliss, the editor of “Ency- 
clopedia of Social Reform,” conducted an investigation into 
the church affiliations of men and women engaged in social 
reform work in the United States. Returns were received 
from over 1,000 persons, of whom 401 were workers in 


80 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


associated charities, 339 in settlements, and 272 were con- 
nected with various national social reform organizations. 
All portions of the country were represented. Out of 878 
social reform workers reporting upon the point, 753 were 
returned as communicants in some church. Even if the 
134 who did not report on this point be all counted as non- 
communicants, it still made 753 out of 1,012, or 74 per cent, 
who were members of the Church. The church membership 
of workers in the associated charities number 92 per cent. In 
settlements it was 88 per cent. Among other reform organiza- 
tions it fell to 71 per cent. It is interesting that of the 980 
who reported on this point, only 22 indicated no dominant early 
religious influence. It was quite obvious from this study that 
while the Church was so largely responsible for the inspiration 
which social workers received, after they became active in their 
life’s work they received very little encouragement from the 
institution which gave them so good a start. 

One of the greatest editors in this country once told me 
that he thought the preacher had the biggest job in America 
because every important problem before the people to-day had 
fundamentally a moral or ethical issue. He added that with the 
Church’s position of authority on morals and ethics, its field 
of work was quite clearly defined: he thought that a preacher’s 
real job was that of interpreter or prophet, and that he should 
not be bothered with the many details that were being heaped 
upon him in the average church. This editor declared that 
the reason so many ministers were considered poor preachers 
was because they hadn’t the time to study—to keep up with 
the times on the big questions of the day, and that the people 
in the pews knew more about what was going on in the world 
than the preachers did. 

However, there is no desire on the part of laymen that the 
minister should concern himself with the every-day business 
life and conduct of his parishioners. While the average busi- 
ness man and employer may sincerely agree to the premise of 
the editor that the great issues of the day are fundamentally 
moral and ethical, and that the labor problem and other impor- 
tant questions can never be settled until they harmonize with the 


CAMPAIGNING FOR WORKINGMEN 81 


teachings of Jesus, these leaders in commerce and industry and 
in affairs of the State actually would never think of inviting 
a preacher to advise with them regarding the principles upon 
which they were to operate their businesses, even though con- 
ceding the preacher to be an expert and authority on morals and 
ethics. I often wondered why this was so. Wasn’t the aver- 
age preacher wise enough? Did he not know how to interpret 
the facts of life? Had he been too easily content preaching 
harmless platitudes until the leaders in their various fields came 
to expect nothing better of him? 

From my own experiences, I felt that many ministers were 
handicapped by inadequate methods of organization in the 
Church and the many trivial demands which it was making 
upon them. Young preachers who began with great zeal and 
earnestness were soon sidetracked and their messages smothered 
because of the multiplicity of minor duties which were laid 
upon them. 

Particularly they had nothing fresh and interesting to say 
to workingmen. Those who held the interest of workingmen 
at all did so through the emotional appeal. This method must 
not be undervalued, because unquestionably emotions enter 
very largely into the religious life of every one. But one 
startling fact presented itself to me very early in my work— 
apparently, the more intelligent workingmen became, the less 
interested they became in the Church. 

I discovered that the real problem of the Church was not 
so much to win the workers who were bitter, but those who 
were indifferent. The general tendency among workingmen, 
was simply to tolerate the preacher and the institution which 
he represented. They did not feel unkindly toward the min- 
ister, but they felt that he had nothing vital to say to them. 

There has always been a needless antagonism between the 
men in the Church who believed in social service and those 
who believed in evangelism. It has seemed to me that the 
sharpest criticism came from the evangelists who persisted in 
saying that social workers were concerned only about changing 
a man’s environment; that they cared nothing whatever about 
his spiritual welfare. A famous evangelist of another day 


82 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


always evoked a laugh from his audience by saying, “These 
social workers believe that all that is needed is another grand- 
father and better sanitation.” 

The evangelists arrayed themselves against social settle- 
ments and all other forms of work which expressed an interest 
in improving the everyday conditions of the people. Actually 
there were very few social workers in the Church itself who did 
not give spiritual values the chief place in their work in behalf 
of humanity, but as they felt the great need for social work, 
they wasted no time in argument, but engaged in it without 
apology. 

The feeling on the subject of social work in the Church has 
been so bitter in many quarters that the conservatives in the 
Church literally drove out many men and women who might 
have become a distinct asset in the larger activities which the 
Church later took on. 

It dawned on me one day that evidently those preachers who 
were opposed to social work knew nothing about what the 
poor in the city were facing. They usually prefaced their 
remarks by saying that they themselves had been poor, and 
sympathized with the unfortunate. But it developed that the 
poverty to which they referred had been the simple life with 
its lack of luxury in a small town or on a farm, which was 
quite different from the pangs of cold and hunger experienced 
behind dank city tenement walls, similar to those which I had 
gone through. 

When this realization came to me, I began to question the 
various groups of preachers which I addressed every Monday 
morning in some city, as to where they were born and raised 
and I found that fully ninety per cent of the ministers in city 
churches had their early training in the country—they were 
farmers’ boys and they always seemed proud of it. But this 
also accounted for their failure to reach the workingmen! 
Leaving their homes to go to college and then to the seminary, 
they had practically no contacts with city life when they came 
to take charge of city parishes, and they almost invariably 
built their city churches upon elaborated country church pro- 
grams, with no true understanding of what the people in the 


CAMPAIGNING FOR WORKINGMEN — 83 


community were thinking about or what their problems were. 

It seemed strange to me that so many churches should be 
allowed to exist in a community when they were so apart from 
the life of the people. I have felt very keenly that no church 
had a right to exist in a city without being taxed, unless 
that church was rendering a definite service to the community 
in lieu of the taxes which others were asked to pay in order 
to maintain the institutions of the city. Merely to conduct 
an enterprise for the benefit of a few self-satisfied persons who 
constituted the membership of a church having its doors open. 
once a week, did not, it seemed to me, fulfill the Church’s 
obligation to the taxpayers. 

I was once invited to address the Men’s Club in a church 
situated in a suburban community, and upon alighting from the 
train and not knowing where the church was, I asked the clerk 
in the corner drugstore if he could direct me, but apparently he 
had never heard of the church, nor did his assistant know 
anything about it. A man on the street corner, of whom I 
asked the same question, was also ignorant of its whereabouts 
—likewise a young woman with a small boy in tow, whom | 
met further down the street. Going a block farther along, | 
saw a young man letting down an awning—it was raining very 
hard—and I shouted to him: 

“Say, young fellow, can you tell me where the First Pres- 
byterian Church is?” 

“T’m not sure,” he replied, “but I think that’s it just across 
the street.” 

There through the mist I saw the outlines of the church 
building, and going across the street, I found that it was the 
church that I was seeking. When the Chairman of the meeting 
introduced me to a handful of men, he made an apology for the 
smallness of the crowd, but he explained it by saying that it 
was raining, that there were other meetings in other sections 
of the town, and he gave the usual excuses which a chairman 
makes upon such an occasion. 

“T suppose, Mr. Chairman,” I began, “you imagine that 
everybody in this town knows all about this church, knows who 


84 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


the minister is, and knows about the work that you are carry- 
ing on, but you are entirely mistaken.” 

I then told him of my experience in trying to find the 
church. One might have thought that the building was in an 
out of the way part of the town, or that it was a new enter- 
prise, but this was not so. It stood in the very heart of this 
little city, every street-car in town passed by its doors, and I 
was told with a great deal of pride that night that the church 
had been there for two hundred years, but evidently the town 
did not know that it even existed, it had made so slight an im- 
pression upon the people of the community. 

It was one of my conclusions, therefore, that the average 
church was greatly at fault in not making its work known to 
workingmen, as well as others. If the minister was ignorant 
of the workingmen’s problems, the workingmen were decidedly 
ignorant of what the churches were doing, and I felt that 
what was needed was a definite, well-organized publicity cam- 
paign, intelligently and continuously conducted. 

One of the most interesting experiences during this Church 
- and Labor period was a meeting held in Scranton, Pennsyl- 
vania, at a very critical time in that anthracite-coal region. 
The coal operators had flatly refused for years to recognize 
the unions, and the unions had taxed their resources in a series 
of forced contests with the operators. The church where the 
meeting was held, under the pastorate of Dr. Joseph H. Odell, 
had within its membership men of national standing as coal 
operators and employers of labor. Among its trustees were 
T. H. Watkins, appointed a member of the famous Anthra- 
cite Strike Commission by President Roosevelt; E. L. Fuller, 
president of the International Salt Company; Henry Belin, 
Jr., president of the Du Pont Powder Company; T. J. Foster, 
the founder and president of the International Correspondence 
Schools; and T. E. Clarke, general superintendent of the Dela- 
ware, Lackawanna, and Western Railroad Company. There 
were also in the membership some miners, machinists, and 
- molders, 

I addressed the usual Sunday evening congregation. Invi- 
tations had been sent to representatives of the local unions and 


CAMPAIGNING FOR WORKINGMEN — 85 


the district and national officers of labor organizations, who 
responded in generous numbers. I pointed out how religion 
is involved in the labor movement, and how the labor question 
in itself is fundamentally a moral and religious problem, em- 
phasizing the obligation of both employers and workingmen 
not only toward the Church but toward each other. 

Immediately afterward a “reception” was held in the base- 
ment of the church, at which refreshments were served. The 
two hundred men present took part in what a local newspaper 
characterized as “the most novel scene ever witnessed in this 
community.” After a straight-out discussion by both sides, 
those prominent coal operators were shaking hands and eating 
and drinking with union officials whom they had fought for 
years, but had never met. T. E. Nicholls, the president of 
District No. 1 of the United Mine Workers of America, and 
who had been recently elected as a Labor Representative in Con- 
gress, came into personal touch with the forces that had op- 
posed his election most strongly and bitterly. Officers of the 
Molders’ Union, at that time on strike, were found chatting 
with ironmasters and owners of foundries from which they 
had withdrawn their workers. Hugh Frayne, one of the most 
prominent organizers of the American Federation of Labor, 
was soon on the best of terms with the attorney representing 
the coal-carrying railroads which had been trying for years 
through the courts to break up the Mine Workers’ Union. 
Men who had only cursed one another for years paid graceful 
compliments to one another. The ethical basis upon which 
both sides must rest their cases was disclosed in the discus- 
sion, and misunderstandings that had been a chronic source of 
friction were explained away. Class distinctions were faced 
and discounted, and, what was best of all, the human element 
was kept constantly to the front, so that the mechanical ar- 
rangements of labor and capital seemed to fade, and the con- 
testants regarded themselves as men dealing with men of like 
desires and similar prejudices. 

It became quite clear to me that here was something which 
the Church could do without taking sides with either party in, 
the controversy. It could serve as the great mediator between 


86 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


clashing elements in human society. For this must be remem- 
bered: In the labor situation both sides may be perfectly sin- 
cere and thoroughly Christian in their convictions. They 
usually disagree because they do not understand each other. 
| It was a very common experience to have ministers and lay- 
-men declare, sometimes with indignation and usually with a 
feeling of self-righteousness, that if there was an alienation 
between the Church and the workingman, the workingman was 
at fault. I never argued this point, but insisted that the 
Church was established for faulty people, therefore, the 
greater the fault of the workingman, the greater became 
the responsibility of the Church to win him and to help 
him. I was far more concerned about having the Church be- 
come interested in the workingman than I was about having 
the workingman become interested in the Church. I felt that 
if the Church studied the newer movements among the masses 
and helped direct them with unselfishness and with a devotion 
to the right, it would win millions of those who were then 
outside the Church. 
_ In order-to familiarize ministers with the local labor prob- 
lem [ inaugurated the plan of the exchange of fraternal dele- 
gates between central labor bodies and ministerial associations. 
This not only gave the ministers an opportunity to know the 
workingmen, but it gave the workingmen a chance to know the 
preachers. At one time this plan was in operation in one 
hundred and fifty different cities. The fraternal delegate had 
no vote, and he was not responsible for the actions of the 
organization to which he was delegated. The office was one 
of courtesy, of friendliness, of a desire to know what the 
others were thinking and doing. 

Almost invariably this plan met with instant approval both 
on the part of the ministers and of the workingmen. 

At every session of the central labor body the ministerial 
delegate was called upon to report for his “local.” This gave 
a wise preacher many an opportunity to create better impres- 
sions regarding the attitude of the Church toward working- 
men; and frequently he served as counselor at critical periods 
in the affairs of the local labor unions. He became mediator 


CAMPAIGNING FOR WORKINGMEN — 87 


and arbitrator between factions in the industrial world. On 
Labor Day he marched with the trade-unionists. He was very 
generally recognized as the chaplain of the organized working- 
men in the city. Given these opportunities, tact and wisdom 
must have accomplished many things which never went down 
on the records. 

The trade-unionist delegate gained a new conception of 
what the preachers were talking about at their regular meet- 
ings. Indeed, let me be frank and say that the presence of 
this workingman compelled the preachers to give more serious 
thought to the problems of the working people throughout the 
city. | 

It must not be imagined, however, that it was altogether 
smooth sailing to inaugurate the plan of permitting ministers 
to attend the meetings of central labor bodies. I was told 
frankly in a number of cases that it was feared that the min- 
isters might act as spies, reporting back to the employers what 
went on at meetings of central labor unions, which were usually 
secret meetings. To such aécusations I invariably replied that 
if employers desired to know what was being done behind the 
closed doors of labor unions they had other methods whereby 
this could be accomplished, and I needed simply to refer to 
the system which had been very generally adopted of having 
detective agencies send their representatives to the meetings of 
labor unions in the guise of regular delegates. This fact was 
so well known that without further question the preacher 
was admitted. ; 

The greatest difficulty was experienced in Chicago. i 

“T never yet saw a preacher who did any work,” the leader 
of the opposition said. “I have yet to see the preacher who 
hoed potatoes or sowed a patch of cabbages. I have yet to 
see the garment woven by a preacher. We have had to do 
all of that for them. We have had to carry the preachers on 
our backs, just as we have the other parasites of society. I 
never saw a preacher yet who did not pose as the working- 
man’s friend; but if they are his friends, let them prove it by 
getting off the backs of the workingmen.” 

It was, of course, useless to try to answer all the pe 


= 


88 A SON OF THE BOWERY, 


which were hurled at the heads of the preachers. Most of 
them were ridiculed by the intelligent workingmen present, 
who knew that they came from avowed haters of the Church, 
who did not at all represent the great body of delegates. It 
was simply stated in reply that, as many men in the labor 
movement had charged the Church with having no interest in 
the workingman and not caring about his affairs, the preachers 
were now knocking at the door of the labor union and asking 
for admission, so that they might honestly and sincerely study 
the problems which were facing workingmen; and if they 
were not admitted, the workingmen of Chicago would have 
no excuse if there was a misunderstanding on the part of the 
preachers who sincerely desired to secure exact information. 

Most of the Chicago papers commented favorably, edi- 
torially, upon the plan, and the story of the meeting at which 
the matter was discussed was carried by the press agencies 
throughout the entire country. 

The American Federation of Labor adopted unanimously 
at its Pittsburgh meeting in 1905 the following pronounce- 
ment: ‘Resolved that the American Federation of Labor rec- 
ommends that all affiliated State and central bodies exchange 
fraternal delegates with the various State and city ministerial 
associations wherever practicable, thus insuring a better under- 
standing on the part of the Church and clergy of the aims and 
objects of the labor union movement of America.” 

At that meeting of the Federation I was received as the 
first fraternal delegate from the churches, representing the 
Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. For 
about a dozen consecutive years I attended the conventions 
of the A. F. of L. in that capacity. The last few years, how- 
ever, I represented the Federal Council of the Churches of 
Christ in America, which constituted the combined Protestant 
forces of this country. At each annual session I was received 
with other fraternal delegates—those from the British Trades 
Union Congress, the Canadian Trades and Labor Congress, 
and three or four other national bodies—and I made an ad- 
dress of about half an hour. I was always most cordially 
received by the four hundred delegates. 


CAMPAIGNING FOR WORKINGMEN - 89 


When it is recalled that several years before the Federation 
itself had declined to permit a minister to address its meeting, 
it will be seen that considerable progress had been made in 
winning the friendship of this body. 

At the request of Frank Morrison, secretary of the Amer- 
ican Federation of Labor, I wrote a pamphlet entitled: “An 
Open Letter to Ministers of the Gospel,” in which misapprehen- . 
sions concerning organized labor were explained. This pam- 
phlet was very widely distributed, and is still one of the Fed- 
eration’s publications. | 

“Labor Sunday,” which I introduced while head of the De- 
partment of Church and Labor of the Presbyterian Church, 
proved to be one of the most popular features that the De- 
partment inaugurated. The American Federation of Labor 
also gave hearty endorsement to Labor Sunday and urged la- 
bor unions everywhere to cooperate with the ministers and 
churches in making it a success. Special programs and sug- 
gestions were prepared for the use of the ministers, the custom 
being to have the preacher talk to his own congregation in the 
morning and to the workingmen of the community at night. 

In many cities the labor unions gathered in their halls and 
marched to the church in a body. Ordinarily, the night service 
was a union meeting in which the churches in the neighbor- 
hood participated. Frequently the ushers and the music were 
furnished by the workingmen, and the central labor body 
appointed a special committee to work up the meeting in the 
various locals. This plan was so generally observed that soon 
it was taken up by other denominations until finally the Fed- 
eral Council of Churches made it one of the outstanding fea- 
tures of its work, and it is still being observed throughout the 
entire country. 

For eight years while with the Board of Home Missions I 
regularly wrote a weekly article for the labor press of the 
United States and Canada, consisting of about one hundred 
and fifty papers, and a separate article for the nearly one hun- 
dred monthly journals, thus speaking through these papers 
every week to millions of workingmen and their families. If 
the Board had been obliged to print this material in pamphlet 


90 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


form and distribute it as effectively as these articles were dis- 
tributed among individual workingmen through the labor 
press, it would have cost more each week than the entire an- 
nual budget of the Department. A study of the situation 
revealed the fact that the Department distributed more lit- 
erature for workingmen in this manner than was printed by 
all of the tract societies of the United States combined, of 
which there were something like sixty. 

The result of this wide and effective propaganda was a 
-complete change in the attitude of the labor press, the labor 
leaders, and of workingmen in general toward the Church. 
The radical articles against the Church which formerly ap- 
peared in the labor papers disappeared almost entirely. 

At first I feared that the title “Reverend” which was at- 
tached to my name might shut out the articles from the labor 
papers, but to my surprise, the labor editors not only printed 
it, but frequently added “D.D.” after my name. This, by the 
way, is how I received the “Doctor’s” degree which some of 
my friends insist upon crediting to me. 

The articles which contained the most Scripture and the 
most frequent references to Bible stories were always given 
the biggest headlines. Here again was a demonstration of 
the fact that workingmen responded most eagerly to the reli- 
gious appeal. Several daily newspapers in various parts of 
the country regularly printed the articles in their Saturday 
editions, and a number of them were reprinted by leading 
magazines. . 

Great workingmen’s mass meetings were conducted during 
my incumbency in the Department of Church and Labor, not 
only on every Sunday afternoon during the entire winter sea- 
son in various cities, in theaters and other large public halls, 
often under the auspices of the Young Men's Christian Asso- 
ciation, but frequently under the direction of church brother: 
hoods and sometimes under the supervision of workingmer 
themselves. The, audiences rarely numbered less than one 
thousand. The greatest of these workingmen’s mass meeting} 
were held annually in connection with the meetings of th 


CAMPAIGNING FOR WORKINGMEN 91 


_ Presbyterian General Assembly, when the largest hall avail- 
able in the city was always jammed and usually thousands 
were turned away. In these cases the men attending num- 
bered from six thousand to fifteen thousand. 

Probably the largest meeting ever held in ‘the one hundred 
years’ history of the Presbyterian Church in this country was 
the workingmen’s mass meeting in the Coliseum in Kansas 
City, which though held on a sweltering day, was as crowded 

as any great political convention ever held in that historic 
building. I addressed something like fifteen thousand people 
on this occasion on “A Square Deal,” arguing for a square 
deal for the boss, for the workingman, for the Church, and 
for Jesus. The Governor of the State and the Moderator of 
the General Assembly brought greetings to the meeting. These 
Mass meetings, held in various parts of the country, always 
received the hearty support of the entire labor body in the 
city, and of the newspapers. They were set up systematically 
and painstakingly. A profound impression was always made 
upon the nine hundred odd Commissioners of the General 
Assembly and undoubtedly the Department acquired many 
new friends. 

In connection with the meeting held in the Armory in Louis- 
ville, Kentucky—which likewise became a historical occasion 
because of the tremendous interest manifested—as was my 
custom, I suggested to the Moderator, who had just been 
elected, that he bring a greeting to the workingmen who would 
attend the meeting on the following Sunday in the Armory, 
but I requested that he speak not more than five minutes, as 
the program was already full and the weather was extremely 
warm. 

The gentleman in question squared off a bit and said to 
me with some indignation: 

_ “Tf the Holy Spirit leads me to speak fifteen or twenty 
minutes, I shall speak so long.” 

_ The resentful statement caught me a bit unawares, and I 
aastily replied: 

~ “Oh, please don’t charge up to the Holy Spirit a fool mis- 





92 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


take like that. If you talk twenty minutes on Sunday after- 
noon, it will be out of pure cussedness, and not because you 
were led by the Holy Spirit.” 

He nevertheless talked the full twenty minutes. Since he 
gave a prepared speech, and read from a typewritten manu- 
script, he evidently didn’t trust the Holy Spirit very much in 
this case. 

One of these large meetings in Baltimore, attended by be- 
tween fourteen and fifteen thousand men, made so great an 
impression upon the labor unions of the city that they de- 
termined likewise to have a monster mass meeting in the in- 
terest of labor, leaving out the discussion of religion alto- 
gether. They invited the leading labor officials in America, 
some professors from a near-by university, the Mayor of the 
city, and the Governor of the State as speakers. They or- 
ganized a band of about one hundred pieces. But the entire 
audience, including speakers and band, numbered less than 
three hundred. 

When it was suggested to the officials of the Chicago Fed- 
eration of Labor that a similar meeting be held in that city, 
and I asked their cooperation, they declined to have anything 
to do with it, although they were friendly to the idea, because 
some time before they had tried to have such a meeting and 
the audience had been so small that they would not even men- 
tion a figure. In spite of such a discouraging situation, the 
meeting was organized in the regular fashion, and, notwith- 
standing a pouring rain, the attendance was over three thou- 
sand. A quartette of machinists who sang at the gathering 
broke down twice; but they finally did sing a song in which 
they finished all together. If this had been a regular church 
quartette or a professional group, they would have fared 
badly at the hands of the workingmen present. As it was, 
the machinists were simply jollied, but were cheered to the 
echo when they finally finished. 

Shop meetings at the noon hour developed into an impor- 
tant feature of my work. It was the purpose of the Depart- 
ment of Church and Labor to develop for the churches “in- 
dustrial parishes,’ each church becoming responsible for a 


CAMPAIGNING FOR WORKINGMEN 93 


particular shop and contributing not only money but its min- 
ister and assistants. One of the most significant of this series 
of noon-day shop meetings was held in Chicago, when the 
combined ministerial associations of the city united in a ten 
days’ campaign under my immediate supervision. About three 
hundred meetings were held during ten consecutive days in one 
hundred and ten different shops. They were attended by 
nearly one hundred thousand workingmen. A campaign of 
similar proportions was held in New York, and smaller series 
were conducted in many other cities. 

In one important city the local committee had had great 
difficulty in securing the consent of shop owners to hold meet- 
ings. And when I arrived in town on Saturday morning—the 
meetings were supposed to begin on the following Monday— 
not a single shop was open to the committee. I ordered an 
automobile and visited the superintendents of the biggest fac- 
tories in town with the committee, and before noon a dozen 
places had given permission to have the meetings. 

Previous to my reaching town, the committee interviewed 
the secretary of the local Y.M.C.A. and told him their troubles, 
but he would not help them out. 

“There’s nothing left to do then, but to trust in the Lord— 
and wait for Stelzle,”’ said the chairman. 

“Who’s Stelzle?” asked the Association secretary. ‘He 
can’t have much of a reputation, or else he wouldn’t risk it, 
knowing the campaign is going to be a failure.” 

But it wasn’t a failure. Dozens of other shops and factories 
welcomed the speakers, who soon entered into the campaign 
with the finest enthusiasm, 

On the appointed day, promptly at noon, the cornetist took 
his station at the meeting-place and just as soon as the whistle 
ceased its shriek he began playing as the men filed out or sat 
down to eat their lunches. It was good music, too. I don’t 
mean that it was necessarily of the kind that is known as 
“sacred,” because it was not always. Sometimes it was a 
rag-time selection or some other tune that was familiar to the 
crowd, first heard perhaps in the theater or in the saloon. Not 


94 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


always was the Scripture lesson read, nor was prayer offered 
at every meeting. 

Workingmen were tremendously interested in the entire pro- 
ceeding and attended the meetings without very much urging. 
Perhaps it was because the grime on their faces served as a 
mask to their emotions, or because they felt more comfortable 
in their overalls than when they were “dressed up.” Possibly 
they thought that they had the leader at a disadvantage be- 
cause he was in strange and unfamiliar surroundings while 
they were “at home” or perhaps they felt more secure because 
they were surrounded by their shop-mates. 

In any event, the workingmen were impressed with the 
“dead earnestness” of the preachers, who otherwise would 
not have come down to speak to them in the shop, and the 
preachers won out with the men. 

“You will have a hard time of it in this place,” sympathet- 
ically remarked a workingman to the preacher one day. “I 
am the only Christian man in the shop,” he said. 

When the minister returned on the following day, the same 
mechanic greeted him with a glad smile. “I was wrong,” he 
said. “I supposed that I was the only Christian here. But 
after the meeting yesterday six other men in the shop came 
to me and told me that they also were Christians, and to-day 
just before you came we held a prayer meeting back of a 
boiler, asking for God’s blessing on this meeting.” 

The industrial phase of my work was so marked that social 
service agencies later organized by various denominations 
gave the same emphasis to their work, although, of course, 
the field of social service was much wider than that already 
covered by the Department of Church and Labor of the Pres- 
byterian Church, Interest in the work extended to other coun- 
tries, even as far as Australia. Some of the leading denomi- 
nations in those countries appointed committees to study the 
industrial problem in the United States, and particularly to 
familiarize themselves with what was being done by the Pres- 
byterian Board of Home Missions in this field. 

Probably a dozen different denominational bureaus were 
organized within a few years, with secretaries in charge to 


CAMPAIGNING FOR WORKINGMEN | 95 


study the social problem, but especially the labor question. 
These churches and departments frankly acknowledged their 
indebtedness to the Presbyterian Church because of its lead- 
ership. The Boston Herald said editorially : “When the Pres- 
byterian Church in this country a few years ago established 
its Department of Church and Labor in connection with the 
Home Missionary Society, it established a precedent among 
American Protestant churches and did the most statesmanlike 
thing to be chronicled in the history of American Protestantism 
during the past decade. (The results have justified the inno- 
vation.” 


IX 
OBSERVATIONS OF A SOCIOLOGIST 


HIEN the editors of “Who’s Who in America’ asked 

me how I preferred to be designated in the volume 
which is supposed to contain the names of men and women 
of prominence in the United States, I told them to put me 
down as a “sociologist.” The term has been the cause of no 
end of misunderstanding and trouble for me, although the 
Standard Dictionary defines sociology as “the science that 
treats of the origin and history of society and social phe- 
nomena, the progress of civilization, and the laws controlling 
human intercourse.” 

I confess that as rather an ambitious designation. But, 
strangely enough, unthinking people have insisted that the 
word “sociologist” is synonymous with “Socialist.” Here it 
is that I have had my troubles. 

I am not a Socialist. I follow the Socialists in their pro- 
tests against unjust social and economic conditions to-day, but 
' I cannot accept their program. A former moderator of the 
Presbyterian General Assembly once brought charges against 
me secretly for alleged Socialistic teachings. Without my. 
knowledge he appointed a committee of three to study the 
books and articles which I had written and to listen to some 
of my addresses, in order that his charges might be substan- 
tiated. The first intimation I had that I was being watched 
by this august body was when a press-clipping bureau sent me 
newspaper cuttings from various parts of the United States 
containing my photograph with the statement underneath, 
“Prominent Presbyterian minister charged with being a So- 
cialist.” 

I laughed about the matter, because it had so little signifi- 
cance to me, although here and there in the Middle West a 


few of the Chautauquas and lecture committees declined to 
96 


OBSERVATIONS OF SOCIOLOGIST 97 


engage me becatise of my alleged heretical teachings. The 
committee evidently found nothing to condemn, since the re- 
port concerning this matter never reached the General As- 
sembly. 

However, at the insistent urging of friends, and after I 
had given the matter careful thought, it seemed to me that it 
avas only fair, since the charges had been given such publicity, 
that the findings of the committee should also be brought to 
the light. I insisted upon appearing before the Executive 
Commission of the Presbyterian General Assembly, which had 
the entire matter in charge, and presented my contention that 
the Presbyterian Church had no right to take any action con- 
cerning sociological convictions or teachings, that its concern 
was only with theological teachings, and even though it could 
have proved that I was a Socialist, the matter would be en- 
tirely out of its jurisdiction. I took that position, not for my 
own sake—for it affected me not at all in my work—but for 
the sake of many young men in the ministry who had pro- 
gressive sociological ideas and who I felt should be given the 
opportunity to speak of them as occasion required. The Com- 
mission accepted my position fully, and so reported to the Gen- 
eral Assembly, adding that an apology was due me because 
of the manner in which I had been misrepresented in the 
press due to the attitude of the previous Executive Commis- 
sion, of which my friend of the “Holy Spirit’ episode, the 
ex-moderator from the West, was the chairman. 

Being a “sociologist’”’ in the Church is not a very popular 
thing. Least of all does one receive perquisites from the 
wealthy, nor is one honored by degrees or positions of promi- 
nence. There are too many interests to be conserved, there is 
too much money to be raised, for any institution to run the 
risk of giving such an allegedly dangerous person any place of . 
authority or honor. 4 

At about this time there died in New York City a minister 
who for a generation had been an outstanding leader in pre- 
senting to the Church her social responsibilities, challenging 
hosts of men and women, ministers and laymen alike, in their 
social thinking. While he was very popular at certain kinds 


98 A SON OF THK BOWERY. 


of conventions and conferences, he was not so widely accepted 
—although actually comparatively conservative—by the leaders 
in the Church, even though he was a courteous Christian gen- 
tleman, always mild and considerate of others. 

As a speaker at a memorial service conducted in his mem- 
ory, I was glad to acknowledge my great indebtedness to him 
in directing my thinking with reference to social problems in 
America, ‘The attendance at this memorial service was com- 
paratively small and was entirely unworthy of this really great 
man who actually died a martyr’s death. 

When he was elected a member of an exclusive ministerial 
association in New York City, which would have obligated 
him to entertain the twenty-five or thirty members perhaps 
once a year, he declined membership because he frankly stated 
that he could not afford it. He confidentially told the chair- 
man of the committee which informed him of his election, 
that he and his wife spent only five dollars a week for food 
for both of them, because of their financial condition. 

Fortunately, there are not entirely lacking in the Church 
rich men who are large-hearted and level-headed enough to 
see that it is necessary to speak frankly about certain social 
conditions that need to be remedied. Perhaps because an audi- 
ence of rich people always tempted me to be somewhat more 
extreme than I was ordinarily, one Sunday morning, in the 
Presbyterian church at Riverdale-on-Hudson, I expressed my- 
self as plainly as I knew how about certain injustices, and 
the remedy which I thought the Church should apply to im- 
prove social conditions. The audience consisted of a number 
of prominent millionaires, although the church was very tiny. 
I noticed on the very front seat a big, impressive-looking man 
who sang most lustily and who helped take up the offering. 
After the address this man reached out his hand to me and 
said: 

“T am Cleveland Dodge. I was mighty glad to hear your 
address this morning because I had always heard that you 
were a radical.” 

I confess that I was taken aback by this comment of one 
of America’s leading industrialists, from whom I might have 





OBSERVATIONS OF SOCIOLOGIST 99 


expected a very strong disagreement with my presentation. 
Not content with this assertion, he insisted upon my walking 
home with him; and we talked fully and freely about his own 
labor problems, but mostly about the need of a more progres- | 
sive spirit in the Church. 

The superficial observer would conclude that American 
workingmen lack appreciation of what may be done for them. 
And this would apply particularly to organized labor as a 
whole. It is no doubt true that organized labor is the proud- 
est and most self-sufficient body in the world. It asks no 
favors. It is frankly a fighting machine. It is always on 
parade. 

But this apparent lack of appreciation is mainly due toa 
limited vocabulary on the part of individual workingmen, and 
the general stolidness which pervades their group meetings. 
They dislike giving the impression that they are sentimental, 
although inwardly they respond most readily to the heart ap- 
peal. 

I can say freely that for over twenty years I have taken 
every opportunity to defend organized labor, and in many ways 
I have given service which cost not only time and money, but 
the sacrifice of position and wider opportunity in several fields. 
This service has been rendered whole-heartedly and sincerely, 
and that it has come to the knowledge of workingmen through- 
out the country, there can be no doubt. In all this time I have 
never received one dollar—from labor editors, for whom I 
wrote nearly a thousand different articles, nor from any group 
of workingmen whose meetings I may have addressed, nor for 
special service given from time to time to local and national 
organizations of workingmen. It really never occurred to me 
that I would be compensated financially, nor did I expect or 
desire it. 

However, I recall two occasions when appreciation was ex- 
pressed, once for general service, and again for a specific thing 
done. Mr. Gompers once said to me, when trying to persuade 
me to give up my fight in favor of Prohibition, that up to that 
time organized labor in America would have granted me any- 
thing that I might have asked, but that if I continued this fight, 


100 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


I would make many enemies in the labor movement. The lat~- 
ter proved to be true. But until this discussion took place, I 
had never been given any specific sign that I was especially 
favored by the American Federation of Labor, except, of 
course, as I had won the friendship of many of its officials. 

The other occasion was when I declined to write a series of 
articles for a magazine whose type-setters were out on strike. 
Theodore Dreiser, then editor of The Delineator, had asked 
me to write these articles for his magazine, and I was to re- 
ceive, as I recall it, approximately three thousand dollars for 
the work. After the first story had been written and was ac- 
cepted, it dawned on me that the Typographical Union was 
boycotting this publication, and I told Mr. Dreiser that I could 
not consistently complete the series. The Union heard about 
this transaction and got out a special bulletin expressing its 
gratitude, 

Once, when the local Machinists’ Union in Wilkes-Barre 
invited me to address a theater meeting and I had declined the 
fee which they had offered, I was given a finely engraved gold- 
handled umbrella, which was publicly presented by Father J. J. 
Curran of St. Mary’s Church of that city, and after the meet- 
ing the committee in charge very gravely led me to the local 
hotel where a most sumptuous supper was awaiting me. They 
evidently had ordered everything that the menu afforded, and 
quantities and quantities of the food went to waste. Mean- 
while, the committee solemnly sat around and watched me try 
to do justice to all the various courses. I certainly appreciated 
their hospitality. Never had any one been more generous in 
serving me a meal, 

There have been few occasions when I felt more highly hon- 
ored than when Dennis Hayes, the Irish Roman Catholic head 
of the Glass Bottle Blowers Association, urged me to stop off 
at Milwaukee on my way West, to address the annual conven- 
tion of his organization. It was at a time when Prohibition 
sentiment, expressed in local option victories, was angering the 
men in his craft, who felt that their livelihood was slowly being 
taken away—although the introduction of machines for mak- 


OBSERVATIONS OF SOCIOLOGIST 101 


ing glass bottles really had more to do with it than Prohibition. 

But “Denny,” as his friends affectionately called him, had 
come to realize the harmfulness of the excess use of liquor 
among workingmen, and he had developed a warm regard for 
me because of the principles which he had heard me express 
in addressing the annual conventions of the American Federa- 
tion of Labor. And so he was willing to take a chance. He 
did not know what I was going to talk about and he declined 
to instruct me. But as he led me to the platform, he whis- 
pered: “Brother Charles, we have been having a pretty tough 
time here for about ten days and the men have become very 
irritable, but I’m sure that you’re going to help them—I know 
you'll say the right thing.”’ 

_ In the course of my address, I came quite naturally to a dis- 
cussion of the liquor question, and as I began, I could hear the 
shuffling of shoes on the floor. But I went through with it, 
and closed with an appeal for the expression of the highest 
ideals of organized labor in their convention proceedings. 
Scarcely had I finished, when “Denny’s” gavel pounded out 
three terrific blows and the whole body of delegates arose, still 
cheering my address. And while they were still standing, a 
delegate moved that the entire address, which had been re- 
ported stenographically, be printed in the minutes, which reso- 
lution was unanimously adopted, amid the utmost enthusiasm. 
When I turned around to take my seat, I saw the tears stream- 
ing down “Denny’s” cheeks. It had been a tremendous strain 
on him, but he had been vindicated. 

- When I reached Denver, on that same trip, I preached in the 
Jewish Synagogue in that city at the regular Friday night ser- 
vice, at the earnest solicitation of Max Morris, the head of the 
International Protective Association of Retail Clerks, who was 
a member of the Synagogue. Both Hayes and Morris were 
members of the Executive Council of the American Federation 
of Labor. 

Occasionally I felt the necessity of taking a “swing about 
the circle,” visiting some representative cities, not only for 
the purpose of giving formal addresses to selected audiences, 


102 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


but ‘of talking out with employers, workingmen, ministers, 
social workers, and others the particular problems by which 
they were faced. 

After I had addressed a Rotary Club in a northern Penn- 
sylvania city—I had been limited to ten minutes because it 
was feared that I was a radical—the owner of the largest 
foundry in the city asked me if he might not come to my 
hotel so that I could finish my address to him in person. He 
said he had some very definite questions to ask me about con- 
ditions in his own plant. At the hotel he talked steadily for 
an hour, unburdening himself regarding the things he was 
facing. 

“One day the men in one of my departments struck for 
higher wages,” he said tome. “I knew nothing about it until 
after the thing had happened. When the superintendent told 
me that the men had gone out, I asked him whether he didn’t 
think that they should have had their wages raised. He re- 
plied that there was no doubt that they were getting less than 
they should. I said to him: ‘You damned fool, why didn’t 
you give it to them? I’ve got to depend on you for things 
like that. It’s your business to see that the men get a square 
deal. I can’t keep track of all the details of the shop.’ Then 
the superintendent told me that he thought he was doing me 
a favor by keeping wages down as low as possible. 

“But,” turning to me, this employer said, “that superin- 
tendent not only misrepresented the men to me, but he mis- 
represented me to the men. I fired him because of his injus- 
tice to both.” 

As a rule, I have found employers of labor to be far more 
liberal toward their men than those who are supposed to rep- 
resent them. 

The leading minister of another Pennsylvania steel town 
piloted me through the mills there, accompanied by the super- 
intendent, to whom I was introduced as “‘the Reverend Charles 
Stelzle,’ with nothing said about my interest in sociological 
matters. 

I remarked casually to the superintendent: “I suppose that 
all your men are members of the labor union, aren’t they?” 


OBSERVATIONS OF SOCIOLOGIST 103 


He replied, with a smile: ‘No. So far as I know, not any 
of the men in this plant belong to the union.” 

“How do you find out whether a man is a member of the 
union or not?” I asked. 

“Do you see that man on the top of that pile of slag?” 
pointing to rather an ordinary-looking laborer. ‘Well, that 
man may be a spy employed by a detective agency in Pitts- 
burgh. This mill is full of men of that kind. If anybody 
speaks to them about joining a labor union, or if they dis- 
' cover any man who is a member of a union, it is so indicated 
in the report which they mail to headquarters that night. 
These spies never report in person. Everything is done 
through the mails, to protect them. That way they can do 
their work more effectively.” 

“Do the men in the mill know that they are being watched 
in that way?” I asked the superintendent. 

“Of course they do,” he replied. ‘That makes them all 
the more careful in their labor agitation. It is absolutely 
impossible for any kind of an organizer to do any work 
among the men employed in this plant.” This he said with a 
great deal of pride. | 

I could easily fancy the attitude of the average workingman 
in that mill, with the knowledge that through this system of 
espionage his every action might be reported to headquarters. 
It did not really matter whether he wanted to join the union 
or not. It was the fact that he could not join if he wanted 
to which made him bitter. 

Unfortunately, the espionage system is still very widely prac- 
ticed. I have a conviction from my own experience within 
the ranks of labor that the bitterness aroused by the presence 
of a spy is far greater than any damage that might be done 
by open discussion of what labor men are thinking and pro- 
posing to do. After all, frankness wins more than trickery. 
The open-handed method of a boss is always productive of 
better results than the secret spying of men who are usually 
paid to make out a case against the laborers if it can possibly 
be done, to prove to the boss the necessity of the kind of 
service their agency is giving. 


104 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


Everywhere in industry I found an atmosphere of mili- 
tancy. There seemed to be neither trusted leadership nor defi- 
nite plan of action on either side of the battle-line—and, 
frankly, the battle was going on. It is this lack of leadership 
which either saves us from an industrial outbreak or deprives 
us of an industrial peace. There is an increasing impatience 
on the part of labor with anything except that which promises 
prompt action and immediate relief. But it is also obvious 
that there is a tightening up on the part of the extreme con- 
servatives among employers. For a time after the war it ap- 
peared that they had recognized the fact that the workers 
had entered upon a new era and that it was impossible to go 
back to the conditions that existed before the war. Then came 
the organized movements against alleged “Reds” and radicals 
of every kind, which had at least some justification, with the 
result that there has developed a conservatism among some 
employers which simply invites extreme radicalism on the 
other side. 

I spent several days in Lackawanna, near Buffalo, when the 
Lackawanna Steel Company was attempting to secure relief 
from the New York State law which required one day’s rest 
in seven, visiting the homes of the workingmen and interview- 
ing saloon-keepers, boarding-house keepers, storekeepers, and 
others who knew the facts regarding the situation in the mills. 
I found the assertion general that the steel company was al- 
ready violating the law by working some of its men seven 
days a week. 

The company’s chief argument was that none of its com- 
petitors, all of which were outside the State, observed one 
day’s rest in seven; that there was no evidence that the opera- 
tives wished the statute strictly enforced; and that the scarcity 
of labor was such that it was impossible to hire sufficient men 
to comply strictly with the statute. The Federal Council of 
Churches was fighting the company’s request, in alliance with 
several State-wide organizations having to do with industry, 
sociology, and religion. 

When I was in Lackawanna, I learned that the pressure of 
the work done by the men in the plants and the inferiority of 


OBSERVATIONS OF SOCIOLOGIST | 105 


their living conditions were freezing them out as they ap- 
proached their fortieth birthday. Comparatively few men. 
over forty-five were working in the mills. The death rate in 
Lackawanna was 24.5 per thousand of the population, as 
against 13.5 per thousand in New York City itself. There 
were 164 saloons in the town, one to every ninety persons, 
and twenty saloons within two blocks of one of» the main 
gates of the plant, before whose bars men stood five and six 
deep and drank beer and whisky as they rushed out of the 
mills at the noon hour and at the close of the day, because 
of their exhausted condition. 

The argument that the men wanted to work seven days a 
week was countered in part by the contention that if any man 
desired to work seven days in a steel mill, there were just two 
reasons for it: either his wages were so small that he was 
compelled to work, or he had become so sodden because of 
the seven-day week that his finer sensibilities had become 
blurred. The question was raised whether a workingman 
had the right to work seven days a week continuously. If it 
was a bad thing for a man’s family and for the State that he 
injured himself physically and mentally by working seven days 
in the week, if he was likely to become a charge on society, 
if he should injure other workingmen, then the State had 
a right to insist that he should not be permitted to work a 
seven-day week. 

Quite different from these experiences in industrial cities 
were those which I had in sixty-nine towns with an average 
population of 5,000, situated in Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, 
Michigan and Wisconsin, while on a Chautauqua trip. These 
Chautauqua audiences were drawn from all classes in the com- 
munity, although they usually represented the best element in 
those classes. Following each address there was an open 
forum discussion. This gave me an unusual opportunity to 
draw out the people and to get at their processes of thinking 
regarding American social and religious problems. I discov- 
ered that it was very rarely true that the men who were the 
leaders in local commercial and civic affairs were also leaders 
in the work of the church. The small town attitude toward 





= a ——__-—— 


106 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


the church and the preacher on the part of such men was one 
of patronage or paternalism. They spoke of the “Reverend 
Smith” with toleration. This was also often true of large 
numbers of professional men and women. The ministers in 
some towns had so little standing that even the women who 
ran the Chautauquas would not give the preachers the com- 
plimentary tickets which they had been receiving from time 
immemorial. | 

There was almost absolute lack of united religious effort in 
the average small town and this was particularly true in the 
Southern States where from 80 to 9o per cent of the people 
were members of the church. 

There was still a good deal of feeling against the motion 
pictures in the small town, and in several cases the ministers 
declared with vehemence to their people that if they persisted 
in going to see the motion pictures they were on the road to 
hell. It was remarkable that in many of these small towns, 
while it was comparatively easy to interest men in Bible classes 
» which they attended in large numbers because they had a 
chance to talk, they were not so ready to attend the services 
_of the church, where they had nothing to do but to listen. 

In defense of the ministers of the churches in these small 
cities, it should be said, first of all, that it is undoubtedly more 
difficult to make good in the average small town than it is in 
the larger city because of the limited number of persons with 
which the average minister is compelled to work. He must 
make good with these people or he will not make good at all. 
Furthermore, the preacher is face to face with more conserva- 
tism than he will probably find in the larger cities. He must, 
for example, deal with the “retired farmer,” who is by all odds 
the most reactionary individual in this country, not only in 
the churches, but in every other relationship, largely because 
he is interested in maintaining the present state of things, be- 
cause any agency which would take away from his stated in- 
come would work a serious hardship upon him. Therefore, 
he is opposed to practically all improvements which may cause 
him to pay higher taxes or more assessments. This con- 


OBSERVATIONS OF SOCIOLOGIST 107 


servatism naturally influences his attitude toward matters of 
religion and church management. ' 

It was my conviction that the churches of America should 
engage in a campaign for the conservation of life. In a state- 
ment which I issued in 1916 for the consideration of the 
churches, I said that “the practical effects of the miracles of 
Jesus whereby he raised men from the dead'may be repeated 
to-day, not in exceptional cases as was true of Jesus’ experi- 
ences, but in the average man’s life. Human life may be ex- 
tended fifteen years in a single generation by applying the 
science of preventing disease and accidents. Science alone 
could never accomplish this miracle, because the extension of 
human life will resolve itself into a question of developing 
character and will power. The prevention of sickness and 
death involves the ability to fight harmful appetites and evil 
practices. Science must be supplemented by moral and spir- 
itual culture. The Church can furnish the power whereby 
self-control can be exercised as no other agency can.” 

But my special interest was in the wage-earners and what 
they suffered on account of sickness and death. The thirty- 
five million workers in the United States at the time that 
this statement was originally presented to the Churches, lost 
an average of nine days each year on account of illness. This 
made a total of 315,000,000 days. If the average wage earned 
by these workers was only $3.25 per day, it meant a loss of 
}1,025,000,000, and the cost for doctor’s fees, medicine and 
other extras, probably amounted to as much more, making a 
total of over $2,000,000,000 lost by workers on account of 
illness, and what a worker loses in this way can never be made 
up—it is to him a total loss. This was about four times as 
much as was given to all kinds of philanthropy during normal 
times. Furthermore, sickness was the disabling cause in 80 
per cent of the cases assisted by organized charities, and in 
proportion that sickness could be reduced, it was quite plain 
that poverty could be eliminated. The industrial workers in 
this country paid a fearful price for our great commercial and 
industrial prosperity. It had been conservatively estimated 


108 A. SON OF THE BOWERY, 


that at least 30,000 working people were killed annually in 
industry, and 300,000 more were seriously injured, although 
there were said to have been 2,000,000 industrial accidents of 
all kinds every year. The death-rate among workingmen was 
very much higher than it was among men of all classes— 
almost 50 per cent. No other organization besides the Church 
could possibly conduct such a campaign without enormous ex- 
pense and the building up of a tremendous machine; but the 
Churches were already in a position to do the work as far as 
equipment was concerned. They had the buildings, organi- 
zation, membership, influence, motive power, and the money 
to meet all expenses. These were the arguments used. 

Detailed plans were set up whereby the entire proposal was 
to be organized. But then came the war; human life was 
counted very cheap. It was apparently no time to promote a 
campaign for the conservation of human life, and the pro- 
posal was shelved. But here is still a task which the Church 
may take up at any time with great honor to itself and with 
boundless benefit to all humanity. 

I have always instinctively rebelled against the tyranny of 
the pious Sunday in the lives of working people. To have 
one day’s rest in seven is highly essential, but to pass tyran- 
nical laws as to what may be done or may not be done on this 
seventh day of rest has often been carried to such extremes 
that Sunday has become a nightmare to many workers. A 
prominent preacher in New York City once “marveled” that 
God did not cause the Metropolitan Tower, with its fifty 
stories of steel and stone, to fall upon the “Sabbath breakers” 
~in the park in Madison Square. If this gentle soul would 
have taken the time to study the tired and worn-out men and 
women who were sitting upon the benches in the park, trying 
to escape from their stuffy little quarters, he probably would 
have been more sympathetic in his expression. The depth of 
their depravity was reading such scraps of newspaper as they 
could borrow from one another. 

There are hundreds of thousands of people in our large 
cities to whom Sunday offers the only relief from the mo- 
notony of their daily toil at any time of the year, and it must 


OBSERVATIONS OF SOCIOLOGIST 109 


not be forgotten that the Sunday recreational problems of 
a big industrial city cannot easily be understood by people who 
have always lived in the suburbs or in country towns. To 
close recreational centers on Sunday, whether they are con- 
certs, movies, art galleries, or libraries, merely because those 
who patronize them will not go to church is, to say the least, 
a sign of mighty poor sportsmanship on the part of the 
churchman, and yet that is frequently the principal argument 
used against allowing people to enjoy Sunday as they prefer 
to spend it. The fairer thing is to make the Church so attrac- 
tive and appealing that men and women will see that it is 
better to go to church on Sunday than anywhere else. 

At Chautauqua, New York, where I was speaking one day, 
in answer to a question from the audience, I said that I fa- 
vored the hiring of a string of big barges and having the 
working people in the intolerable tenements during the sum- 
mer taken for a trip out on Long Island Sound, where they 
might spend Sunday, instead of sweating and swearing at 
home. Bishop John H. Vincent, the founder of the mother 
Chautauqua, presided at the meeting. It was most encourag- 
ing to see him clap his hands in approval at the suggestion. 

After all, it is true as I once replied to a preacher who pro- 
tested against a Sunday program which I had set up in the 
tenement district, arguing that I was not justified in doing 
these things on the “Lord’s Day”: 

“Tt may be the ‘Lord’s Day’ up where you live, but it’s 
the devil’s day down where I work.” 


x 


ELBA A CS CABO bats WIRY BEY S 


ID vere: G the early years of my national activity, I wrote 
about fifty leaflets and pamphlets on how to conduct va- 
rious kinds of enterprises in local churches. While all of these 
plans had grown out of actual experiences and had proved suc- 
cessful in my own work, I discovered that some ministers were 
trying to adopt these suggestions bodily in fields to which they 
did not apply, failing to realize that no two fields are exactly 
alike, and that each church must study the peculiar conditions 
in its own community, and then organize its work in view of 
the needs discovered. 

It was this fact which led to the setting up of a Survey De- 
partment, which soon became an outstanding feature of the 
Presbyterian Department of Church and Labor. Not only 
were the fields of local churches studied and recommendations 
made as to the kind of work which should be conducted, but 
surveys, covering social, economic, and religious problems, 
were made of entire cities and counties and states. 

Making surveys was an utterly thankless job, because the 
diagnosis of a city was not made for the purpose of discover- 
ing its good points so much as it was to find out what in the 
city’s life needed remedying. When reports were made to 
citizens, usually in public meetings, the facts produced were 
not especially complimentary. 

Sometimes there was a disposition on the part of the local 
municipal officials to deny or fight back when survey figures 
were published. But invariably whatever statements were pub- 
lished or made on the platform could be substantiated by sta- 
tistics or other data which had been secured by trained in- 


vestigators. 
110 


THE FACTS ABOUT SURVEYS Ill 


In a city in northern New Jersey a mass meeting was called 
for Sunday afternoon in a large theater to present the find- 
ings of the survey and recommendations based upon them. 
As I was entering the theater for the afternoon meeting— 
and the place was packed—a friend met me at the door and 
cautioned me that the Health Commissioner was in the audi- 
ence, and that he had threatened to “make a monkey out of 
me” before the crowd if I dared say anything there about 
health conditions. 

However, as I proceeded to present the findings of the re- 
port on health conditions, which reflected failure on the part 
of that particular Department to fulfill its functions in main- 
taining the health of the city, there was not a word from the 
Commissioner, because he soon knew only too well that I was 
correctly quoting figures which his own office had furnished. 

One of the most successful surveys was that made for the 
Men and Religion Forward Movement, which was conducted 
by the combined Protestant Churches and other religious en- 
terprises of the United States. Seventy principal American 
cities with a combined population of twenty millions were stud- 
ied during the winter of I9QII in preparation for the campaign 
conducted by the movement during the following year. About 
one thousand questions were addressed to the local committees 
having charge of the surveys in each of the cities, covering 
among other things the following subjects: the population, mu- 
nicipal administration, social influences, housing, health, politi- 
cal life, social service agencies, public schools, libraries, recrea- 
tional life, juvenile delinquency, and the general condition of 
the churches. 

It will no doubt be interesting to give a brief summary of 
some of the principal findings, so that one may get a picture 
of the conditions in these seventy cities as they were fifteen 
years ago. 

The membership in all the Protestant churches consisted of 
30.7 per cent of men, 54 per cent of women, 6.2 per cent of 
boys between the ages of twelve and eighteen, 9.1 per cent of 
girls between the ages of twelve and eighteen. Sixty-five per 
cent of those who attended the Sunday morning services in the 


112 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


Protestant churches were women, and the morning attendance 
at all the churches was 65 per cent of the total attendance of the 
day. More people united with the Church at the age of four- 
teen than at any other time, and there appeared to be a sharp 


decline in Church accession after twenty-one. Seventy-three | 


per cent of all the contributions to the Protestant churches in 
these cities for the previous fiscal year was used for congrega- 
tional expenses. The amount spent for denominational benevo- 
lent purposes was about equally divided between home and for- 
eign missions. Of the enrollment in the Sunday schools, 57.2 
per cent were women and girls, and 42.8 per cent were men 
and boys. 

Among the millions of subscribers to the public libraries, 
25.5 per cent were men, 35.6 per cent were women, 19.6 per 
cent were boys, and 17.3 per cent were girls. The record of 
crimes and arrests indicated that of those arrested, 80.3 per 
cent were men, 9.I per cent were women, 6 per cent were boys, 
and one per cent girls; 40.8 per cent of the cases were due to 
drunkenness, 19.9 per cent to disorderly conduct, 8.2 per cent 
to disturbance of the peace, 7.8 per cent to vagrancy, 6.1 per 
cent to assault, 4.8 per cent to larceny, 3.5 per cent to gam- 
bling, and 5.1 per cent to social evil. The Juvenile Court rec- 
ords showed that 25.4 per cent of the boys committed were 
guilty of larceny, 26.3 per cent of incorrigibility, 8.2 per cent 
truancy, 6.1 per cent disorderly conduct, 2.2 per cent assault, 
and 31.8 per cent other causes. The parents of these boys were 
52.3 per cent American born, 7.6 per cent German, 5.8 per cent 
Irish, 5.1 per cent Italian, 2.2 per cent Russian, and 27 per 
cent were of other nationalities. 

During the Men and Religion Forward Movement campaign 
it was my especial task to head up the social service section. 
Associated with me were such men as Graham Taylor and 
Raymond Robins, of Chicago, and several members of social 
service commissions of the various denominations, each of 
whom worked with separate teams of half a dozen men. My 
own part was that of taking charge of all the surveys for the 
various cities and serving as the dean of the social service 
“experts.” I was also leader of “Team 1.” ‘There were four 


Se. Oo 


THE FACTS ABOUT SURVEYS 118 


teams which were in the field continuously for almost a year. 
The entire task was under the direction of Fred B. Smith, 
whose matchless generalship was responsible for the success 
of what I regard as one of the most stirring social movements 
that ever swept this country. 

“Team I’? was commanded to cover a chain of Southern 
cities. It would not be fair to mention them by name, be- 
cause many of them were greatly handicapped by conditions 
for which they were not altogether to blame, as compared with 
some Northern cities which had much greater opportunity and 
longer experience in making progress in the social and educa- 
tional field. The meetings in each city were continued for a 
week. Each man on the team held three or four sessions a 
day. In every city visited I met with the municipal authori- 
ties and other agencies which dealt with social problems. Rec- 
ommendations were based upon studies which had been made 
by local committees. Ordinarily these studies had occupied 
some months’ time. 

Whenever an unusual situation was discovered, I tried to 
make a special visit or a closer analysis before discussing the 
question in public. In one city I visited the workhouse be- 
fore addressing the city commissioners and a group of nearly 
one hundred business men at a luncheon. At the workhouse 
I had found about thirty men, practically all Negroes, who 
belonged to the chain gang, occupied during the day in sweep- 
ing the streets of the city. The clothing worn during the 
day was slept in at night, and they were about as filthy as one 
can imagine. There was an old cast-iron bathtub in the mid- 
dle of the yard in which the men bathed, and although many 
of them had the most shocking forms of venereal diseases, it 
was the custom for about fifteen of them to bathe in the same 
water without change. When I addressed the business men, 
I pictured the situation as graphically as I knew how, closing 
my remarks with the statement: 

“T would rather go to hell than be sent to your workhouse.” 

Needless to say, the city commissioners saw to it that con- 
ditions were cleaned up in that workhouse in a hurry, perhaps 
largely because the leading newspaper in the city took up the 


114 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


charges in its columns, running a big headline across the top 
of the front page which read: 

“Stelzle Would Rather Go to Hell Than Go to Our Work- 
house.”’ 

In another city of the South I found what was really a 
frightful condition in the principal packing-house. Conditions 
in the public laundries were vile, and there were situations in 
several of the department stores which were deplorable. 

It happened that the Daughters of the Confederacy were 
in session in the city while our meetings were in progress, and 
I was invited to address nearly two thousand women on “‘social 
conditions.” It was not expected that I would speak on the 
situation in that city, but I reminded those women of the 
South that naturally they were far more interested in what 
was going on in the very city in which they were meeting 
than to have me tall about social problems in New York City, 
where I lived. Then I told my story, giving exact figures and 
facts, and using the plainest language possible. The audience 
was naturally greatly horrified, and many of them were in- 
dignant. 

The evening paper printed the story of my address. I found 
out many years later that the story was written, not by a re- 
porter, but by the wife of the editor, who happened to be in 
the audience, but who had never before written a newspaper 
article. The morning newspaper did not carry the story, but 
for a perfectly obvious reason, I discovered later. The man- 
aging editor of the evening paper which had printed it called 
me on the telephone at the hotel and wanted to know if I 
would stand for what I had said to the women the afternoon 
before. Then he told me that the owner of the packing- 
house whose conditions I had particularly emphasized had 
threatened to sue his paper for fifty thousand dollars. I re- 
plied that I would not only stand for what I had said but 
that the managers of the entire movement which I repre- 
sented would back me financially and otherwise in making a 
fight to the finish. Late in the day I learned that the owner 
of the packing-house had gone to one of the leading business 


THE FACTS ABOUT SURVEYS 115 


men of the city and had complained most bitterly of what | 
had said. 

“Did the fellow tell the truth?” asked the business man. 

“Yes, he certainly had the goods,” was the reply. 

“Then why in hell don’t you clean up your place?” said the 
business man. “What are you coming to me for?” 

That night I was to leave for another city. Just as I was 
getting ready the telephone in my hotel room rang, and; an- 
swering it, I listened to what was to me a jumble of words. 
But at the end of whatever was said I understood the voice 
to repeat: 

“T am the deputy sheriff. You are hereby summoned to 
appear immediately before the grand jury.’ 

Of course I went. And for two hours I gave that grand 
jury more stuff than they could digest in many sessions. They 
threatened to follow up my statements, but I rather think that 
the enterprise concerned cleaned up, for that was the last that I 
heard of the entire situation. 

The morning paper, which also had been threatened with a 
libel suit if it copied the story in the evening paper, said edi- 
torially a little while later, possibly to get itself into the good 
graces of the complainants: 

“If you want to land in jail, just start in to make a noise 
like Stelzle.”’ 

The Southern Sociological Congress grew out of these 
Southern experiences of ours. It has ever since been active 
in promoting the welfare of the South in the fields of the 
subjects discussed in that series of meetings. 

A typical extensive survey was made by the Department of 
Church and Labor to find out how workingmen spent their 
spare time. This study was made by the staff of the Depart- 
ment under the general direction of George E. Bevans, in con- 
nection with work he was doing. for Columbia University. 
Over a thousand workingmen were interviewed, and nearly 
four months were required to complete the investigation. 
Among the men studied were found to be 29 different nation- 
alities, and 164 trades and occupations. Sixty-four per cent 
were married. 


116 A. SON OF THE BOWERY 


Here are some of the outstanding facts which were revealed: 

Men working the shortest number of hours were the most 
temperate in their habits. It had often been said that if 
workingmen were given shorter hours and more leisure time 
they would spend the extra time in saloons. That was clearly | 
proved to be untrue. Long hours, causing over-fatigue, 
seemed to lower the vitality of workingmen, so that at the 
end of the day’s work they gravitated toward saloons. Books 
were read by fully twice as many of the eight to nine hour 
workers as by the group who worked eleven hours or more. 

Married men patronized the saloon more than single men. 
There was an interesting phenomenon for the moralist, and 
the psychologist, and the sociologist! Part of the explanation 
is that the saloon had the most appeal in the dull, drab years 
of middle age, which were usually the married years. Fur- 
thermore, wives suffered limitations by remaining at home 
with domestic duties, seeing few persons except their families. 
Husbands had broader experience in the association of other 
men in their shops and lodges and labor unions. So they were 
likely to spend their free hours away from home, where talk 
was more interesting. Workingmen spent more money for 
beer than for any other recreational item. 

The movies were the workingmen’s principal recreational 
centers. The moving-picture show hit the saloon harder than 
any other agency. 

Church and synagogue received the smallest vote as the most 
profitable way of spending spare time. Men working the 
shortest hours and those highest in mental attainments were 
least responsive to the Church. Old men attended church 
more generally than young men. It was puzzling that the 
men who worked the longest hours, conversely, went to church 
most frequently. It had long been held that workingmen did 
not go to church because they did not have the time. 


XI 


ORGANIZING THE LABOR TEMPLE 


OO on 


l Dade New York is the arena in which the greatest bat- 
tles of America’s masses will be fought for some time to 
come. Here every social, economic, and religious problem of 
the day is being faced by the people of the tenements, without 
regard for precedents and untrammeled by tradition. 

For many years working people had been pouring into this 
district, creating a congestion unparalleled in the history of 
the world. Yet as the people moved in, the Protestant churches 
steadily moved out, deserting them in spite of the fact that for 
generations the Church had been insisting that the Gospel 
which it preached was a universal Gospel; that it met the needs 
of all classes and conditions of men, and that it alone could 
solve the social problems of the times. 

The churches thus practically confessed that they could live 
only when they followed the well-to-do to the uptown districts 
and to the suburbs; that only Socialism and Anarchism could 
thrive in the soil produced by congested tenement life. 

Missionary societies talked about “the problem of the down- 
town church,” whereas the emphasis should have been placed 
on “the downtown problems of the Church.” The situation 
confronting the Church downtown should have been the con- 
cern of the whole Church, and not simply of the downtown 
churches. If there is such a thing as Christian unity in the 
attack upon modern social and religious conditions, it should 
be manifested in the big cities, where the problems are so 
gigantic that no one church can adequately meet them. 

The attempt of religious enterprises to meet the conditions 
in lower New York was manifested in the organization of city 
missions. For a time these succeeded fairly well—while those 
among whom they labored were of nationalities which were 


Lutheran or Protestant of other denominations. But when 
117 


118 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


lower New York was peopled by immigrants from southeast- 
ern Europe these religious enterprises quickly failed. To-day 
they are practically all gone. 

New York thus became a wilderness of humanity, puzzling 
and heartbreaking to many sincere workers who would have 
given their lives to win in the battle against the elements which 
they felt were steadily pulling down the morale of the people. 
Yet that conception was not altogether true, because the recent 
developments in the social and economic world had given the 
masses of the people a new idea of their rights and privileges. 
It was largely this growing spirit of democracy among the 
people which so seriously affected the old-fashioned mission 
enterprise. The managers of those institutions simply failed 
to keep abreast of the times. They lost their grip when the 
masses of the people became imbued with the modern spirit 
of self-reliance and independence. The methods used by work- 
ing people when they first try out their own initial powers 
may not always be right; but the mere fact that they appre- 
ciate their responsibility in trying to solve their own problems 
is most encouraging. 

The situation demanded a new approach on the part of the 
Church. It required a movement which would take into ac- 
count the fact that other forces were fighting for supremacy 
in the hearts of the people, and had already largely taken the 
place of the Church. It was to a great extent a question of 
adaptability, of flexibility, on the part of the Church. To 
this, apparently, the Church of twenty years ago seemed 
unequal. 

On the corner of Fourteenth Street and Second Avenue 
stood a brownstone church which had had a most glorious 
career. Its ministers through a half-century had rendered 
valiant service. But its membership had steadily moved out 
of the district, until a dozen or so years ago there was a mere 
handful left, only thirty or forty people to attend its Sunday 
service. 

Something like twenty-five years ago Dwight L. Moody, the 
famous evangelist, was challenged to conduct a month’s meet- 
ings in this old church. Characteristically, he plunged in, with 


ORGANIZING LABOR TEMPLE 119 


his singer, Ira D. Sankey, and together they held forth. But, 
to Mr. Moody’s utter amazement, not once during the entire 
series of meetings was the church full. On the first night of 
the meetings there were about two hundred people in the audi- 
ence. Mr. Moody had been preaching to audiences of five and 
six thousand in the upper part of the city. Walking onto the 
platform, upon which were seated the ministers of the district, 
Mr. Moody gave one quick glance at the audience. Then, turn- 
ing to the preachers, he said, ‘““Where are the people?” 

The chairman facetiously remarked, “Out on the streets.” 

“Well, why don’t you go out and get them?” quickly re- 
sponded the evangelist. 

There was nothing else for the preachers to do but rather 
sheepishly leave the platform and try to “bring in the multi- 
tudes.” The chairman and another preacher went to a corner 
saloon which was crowded with workingmen, most of whom 
were playing cards or drinking at the bar. 

“Don’t you want to come up to the church on the corner 
of Second Avenue and hear Dwight L. Moody preach?” the 
chairman said to four men who sat at a card-table near the 
door. 

“Who the hell is Moody?” one of them replied. And that 
was all there was to that. 

Mr. Moody admitted complete defeat in this attempt to 
preach the “pure Gospel” to the East Side. Py 

It was not strange, therefore, that when the question of 
selling the property came up in about 1910 before the remnant 
of the congregation they felt justified in disposing of it for a 
considerable sum, and agreeing to combine with another Pres- 
byterian church on the West Side of the city. Before the plan 
was consummated, however, I made a proposal to the officers 
of the church that they give me the use of the church building 
three nights in the week to conduct services in whatever way I 
thought best, but not without their entire approval; simply to 
see what could be done by a new method of attack. 

After considering the proposal for some time, the officers 
voted that my plans be accepted, on condition that I pay the 
church five thousand dollars a year in addition to furnishing 


120 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


all the money for carrying on the work itself. Frankly, I was 
stunned, particularly as I had agreed to take on this work as 
an extra task. I was already responsible for three or four 
other enterprises. I realized, however, that it was because 
these men were simply tired out with the situation under 
which they had been working so long with complete failure, 
that they wished to absolve themselves of any further respon- 
sibility, financially or otherwise. | 

Then I submitted the same general proposal to the Church 
Extension Committee of the New York Presbytery, to whom 
I spoke even more strongly about the responsibility of the 
Church toward this downtown district. Finally, the Committee 
voted to purchase the property outright with part of two mil- 
lion dollars left by John L. Kennedy to the Board of Home 
Missions, with the understanding that I should conduct this 
work for two years as an experiment; that I was to have com- 
plete charge of every department of the work without inter- 
ference by any committee or individual. 

That was the happiest moment in my career as a minister. 
I was about to realize a dream which I had had since my 
machinist days—of organizing and conducting a church such 
as I felt would appeal to the average workingman. It was 
to be a real workingman’s church in every particular. Avow- 
edly it was to be run by workingmen, the men who actually 
lived in the community. So I called it the “Labor Temple,” 
a name which as.a religious enterprise became famous the 
world over even before I had completed my two years’ experi- 


\. mentation. 


To the amusement of the sub-committee representing the 
Church Extension Committee, I assured them the church 
would soon be so crowded that the floors would not stand 
the weight of the people, and I took them into the cellar of 
the old building, where I had found that the floor of the 
main auditorium was supported by wooden posts, and insisted 
that these be removed and that iron pillars take their place. 
I was thoroughly sincere. I was quite positive that the crowds 
would come. And come they did. Within a couple of weeks 
we were compelled to turn them away. During all of these 


ORGANIZING LABOR TEMPLE = 121 


discussions and while the work was being organized I had the 
whole-hearted and constant support .of Dr. Henry Sloane 
Coffin, pastor of the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church 
and a prominent member of the Board of Home Missions, 
under whose immediate direction the work was carried on 
during its initial stages. ~~ 

The Labor Temple bordered the most congested area in 
New York, although at one time it was one of the most fash- 
ionable districts in the city. Fourteenth Street was the divid- 
ing line between the masses living in the big tenements to the 
south and the more favored ones who could afford the greater 
exclusiveness of the club and the “private house.” Less than 
two blocks away was Tammany Hall’s great building, a bee- 
hive of political activity affecting not only every part of New 
York’s life but that of the nation. Within a block was the 
great downtown amusement district of the people. 

Until long after midnight Fourteenth Street was a blaze of 
light, rivaling the day for brilliancy. The saloons, several of 
them run by famous sporting men, were crowded to the doors. 
Here, too, was one of New York’s “red light’ districts. There 
were dance-halls and vulgar motion-picture shows, often hot- 
beds of vice and obscenity. There was a cheap Bohemia 
throughout the section, which was very attractive to the young 
people in the community who had been engaged all day at 
hard work in stores and factories. Yet this was not a “‘slum.” 
The residents in the tenements near by were honest, hard- 
working men and women, as human as the rest of the world, 
but with all the frailties of mankind surrounded by strong 
constant temptation. 

In the midst of this street, where electricity was plentifully 
used by every enterprise which desired to attract the attention 
of the people, the Labor Temple’s electric sign stood out with 
letters two feet square. In addition four large bulletin-boards, 
two on each street, were studded with electric lights and an- 
nounced in big letters what was going on in the Temple. 

Just beyond Broadway, within a few minutes’ walking dis- 
tance, were the great stores and factories which employed hun- 
dreds of thousands of young girls and men and women, shirt- 


122 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


waist makers and operators in the clothing industry. The 
problem above every other was the industrial situation, the 
question of getting a living. That was why Socialism was so 
strong in the district. Every summer night open-air meetings 
were conducted on the street corners by its advocates, and 
during the winter season they held mass meetings in near-by 
halls. 

It was admittedly “the most difficult field in America,’ and 
for that reason it was selected. My desire was to make a 
demonstration of what the Church might do in such a com- 
munity. Obviously, the methods must be different from 
those employed in the “‘family” church. JI made no attempt 
to organize a regular church. I have always felt that those 
who later took hold of the Labor Temple and formed a church 
organization made a fatal mistake, because, in the first place, 
it gave the enterprise at least the suggestion of sectarianism, 
and it actually put officers in charge of important work who 
were incompetent to conduct it. 

This does not mean that the religious element was neglected. 
That guest-preacher who afterward declared that he was cau- 
tioned not to use the name of Jesus in his Labor Temple ad- 
dress simply did not tell the truth—or perhaps he did not un- 
derstand. It would have been felt that we were untrue to 
ourselves and to the people and to God himself were we to 
evade or neglect in our presentation the distinctly spiritual 
aspect of life. We discussed religious questions without 
apology. Still, the men and women who attended the dis- 
tinctly religious meetings got a new conception of the signifi- 
cance of the old Gospel. But I am anticipating. 

The opening meeting, on a Sunday afternoon, was exclu- 
sively for men. To the amazement of everybody, three hun- 
dred and fifty turned out. They were all men of the neigh- 
borhood who had been especially invited by letter. We had 
secured their names and addresses from the polling list at the 
county clerk’s office. With them the entire proposal was 
frankly talked out, and we urged upon them the importance 
of their backing it if it were to be a success. They responded 
enthusiastically. 


ORGANIZING LABOR TEMPLE — 123 


I recall that one of the men in the audience half challeng- 
ingly asked me: “Will you let us talk about Socialism in these 
open forum meetings that you are going to have?” 

“Sure,” I replied. “You can talk about anything that you 
can get away with. But, remember this: There will always 
be somebody else here who is going to have the chance to 
take the other side of the question.” 

Following that meeting, the attendance on practically every 
occasion consisted ninety-five per cent of men, of whom 
seventy-five per cent were Socialists and other radicals. About 
fifty per cent were Jews. 

Meetings were held every night of the week, and Bra cHeally 
every address was followed by an open forum discussion. For 
a month I listened to the severest arraignment of the Church 
that I had ever heard—and J had been listening to criticisms 
of the Church for many years in practically every industrial 
center in this country. When I felt that the criticisms were 
just, I frankly admitted it, but pointed out that the opening 
of this Labor Temple was an attempt to get at the actual facts, 
and that we were going to talk about the thing as friends, and 
altogether we were going to right as many wrongs as we could 
and that the whole thing was to be done in a thoroughly demo- 
cratic fashion, without any patronage on either side. 

It was interesting that the Labor Temple audience exhausted 
itself making criticisms of the Church, and the speakers never 
repeated their accusations. After every person had once de- 
livered himself of the speech against the Church which ran- 
kled somewhere in his system, he never repeated it. When a 
stranger wandered in and began to berate the Church, the 
audience promptly came to the defense of the Church, because 
all that was old stuff; we had admitted it, and there was no 
need of our talking further about it. After the atmosphere 


was thus cleared, we got down to real business. al 


XII 
THE) WORK OF) THE GABOR TEMPLE 


RHE Labor Temple was by no means second to its neigh- 
boring movies in the number of features it offered. It 
ran a continuous “‘bill” on Sundays, in addition to speeches 
and discussions every other night, and social reform clubs in 
lieu of church brotherhoods, besides other activities which got 
down to the every-day problems and life of the people in the 
neighborhood. 

Sunday’s events, from two-thirty till ten, ran as rapidly into 
one another and were as diversified as a radio program nowa- 
days: children’s hour; Bible class; organ recital; reading of a 
literary masterpiece; concert or lecture; and sermon. At five 
o'clock a carefully censored motion picture was shown. It 
was most effective to use the story of “Kelly the Cop,” for 
example, who did a real man’s job as a policeman, built up 
his home, and helped to make New York a better city, more 
so than to present the impossible characters which were shown 
in the average religious film. At six o’clock two hundred per- 
sons (Temple helpers, choir members, student workers, ushers, 
club leaders, Sunday-school teachers, the Temple staff, in ad- 
dition to such friends as might wish to do so) sat down toa 
simple supper, and often there were brief inspirational ad-s 
dresses by prominent out-of-town guests or by those who were 
picked upon by the toastmaster—‘“roastmaster’’ he was some- 
times called. 

Meanwhile, the members of the choir were gathering. 
‘Promptly at seven, one hundred strong, they had taken their 
seats on the platform, but behind a great screen upon which 
illustrated hymns and solos were thrown during the half- 
hour of music preceding the regular Sunday-night service. 
As the door of the main auditorium was almost upon the 
street, passers-by, seeing the songs upon the screen, came in. 
At eight o’clock the hall was always packed. 

124 


WORK OF THE LABOR TEMPLE 125 


I had carefully studied the methods of motion-picture 
houses and vaudeville theaters to discover means for intro- 
ducing life and snappiness into the program. One of the 
things which I observed was that no time was lost between 
the acts. I realized that the most perilous moment for our 
service was at the transition point from the screen and song 
service to the regular meeting. Therefore it was contrived 
that almost at the snap of the finger the curtain was pulled 
to one side, the lights were turned up, and the choir burst 
forth into an inspiring song. I was on my feet before the 
choir had finished the song, and with a studied gesture—dif- 
fering according to the occasion and the audience—I pre- 
vented a pell-mell movement toward the big front door. We 
rarely lost more than a dozen of our audience. 

The Sunday-night meeting was like a normal church service 
in the sense that the same sort of things were done—but they 
were done decidedly differently. It was designed to inject 
more life and “pep” in the actions of the participants. This 
was true even of the audience, which was always an unusual 
one. ‘There was an expectancy about the people which was 
exhilarating to the speaker. But this spirit also carried with 
it the possibility that if the audience were disappointed, it 
might suddenly leave him—and the big double door in the 
rear of the auditorium was on a level with the street! The 
audiences never behaved the same except that they always ap- 
plauded the prayers; that was their way of saying “Amen.” 
The songs and the Scripture and the prayer were exactly the 
same as in the average church. The sermon was thoroughly 
evangelical, a straight appeal to the hearts of men. They 
were the same sermons precisely that I had used in old St. 
Louis in the big tent, or in the big hall at the mission. I 
rarely had time to prepare new sermons. There was no forum 
discussion on Sunday night, although we had our biggest audi- 
ences at that time. | 

I have always felt that Sunday night between nine and ten 
is the zero hour in a big city. Perhaps more young people 
go wrong during that hour than almost any other. Not 
young people only, but older people as well—those without 


126 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


homes, without definite occupations, without something to grip 
them. So from nine to ten was motion-picture hour at the 
Temple. We kept our very best pictures for then, for we felt 
that if we could hold our audience for another hour it would — 
go a long way toward the right closing of the day. It was 
interesting, however, that, in spite of every effort put into the 
motion-picture program, we always had more people at the 
preaching service between eight and nine than we had during 
the motion-picture hour which followed it. That simply veri- 
fied a fact which I had long known, that there is no appeal 
to the human heart which is quite so strong as that of re- 
ligion if it is presented to the people in a thoroughly human 
fashion, and if you can get it over to them. 

There were many really historic meetings at the Labor Tem- 
ple, involving important issues. During the winter of 1914 
and 1915, when there were four hundred thousand unemployed 
in New York City and fifty thousand men walking the streets 
all night, a group of radical agitators took possession of bread- 
lines and crowds in the back of saloons and began invading 
the churches, assuming that they had a right to the “soft 
cushions” which were not being used during the week by the 
members of the church. 

When these invasions were at their height and no church 
knew when its turn would come next, I challenged the leaders 
to meet me in an open forum debate at the Labor Temple to 
discuss the question whether the unemployed had the right to 
break into churches and use them for lodging-houses. The 
I. W. W. happened to be in session in New York at that time. 
I was told by a newspaper reporter who had attended their 
meeting that afternoon that they, had adjourned to reconvene 
at the Labor Temple at eight for the purpose of “raising hell.” 
Other leaders of the unemployed were out in force; as were 
also many hundreds of their followers. 

We had it out, without apology. I reminded the audience 
that, in the first place, church buildings were never constructed 
to be used as lodging-houses. Their sanitary facilities were 
exceedingly limited. It was common knowledge that when 
churches had been invaded by the unemployed who spent the 


WORK OF THE LABOR TEMPLE 127 


night there the physical conditions found the next morning 
had been vile, due often to pure maliciousness. 

Furthermore, those who slept on the seats were diseased 
and filthy, and there was great danger that this disease would 
be transmitted to little children as well as to the men and 
women who regularly attended the services of the church. I 
remarked that there were other ways of defiling a church than 
was practiced by those whom Christ drove out of the Temple. 
While the Church should be concerned about the physical wel- 
fare of unemployed men, it should not neglect the safety of 
those who normally used the church buildings. 

I told the audience that their boldness was based upon the 
assumption that the preachers were afraid of being consid- 
ered un-Christlike if they refused to permit the unemployed 
to crowd into their buildings. So they defiantly took posses- 
sion of whatever church building they wished, disregarding 
all the courtesies and decencies of conduct which they them- 
selves demanded of everybody else. I pointed out that the 
unemployed had been saying that they did not ask for charity, 
but that they had nevertheless appropriated what they wanted 
without even going through the formality of asking for it. 

Following my address there was a free-for-all discussion. 
At several points the meeting might easily have developed into 
a free-for-all fight. But a wholesome dominant sense of hu- 
mor soon brought back the excited individuals who apparently 
could not control their feelings. 7 

At the time I was serving as executive secretary of the 
Committee on Unemployment of the Federation of Churches 
of New York, as well as an executive on Mayor Mitchell’s 
committee. I could therefore and did remind the audience 
that the position of the churches in the whole matter of un- 
employment was far from being purely negative; that actually 
the churches of the city were furnishing more real jobs to the 
unemployed than any other committee or group at work on 
the same task during that hard winter. That ended the inva- 
sion of churches. 

On another occasion I invited Anthony Comstock to tell 
his story of the fight against the spreading of indecent litera- 


128 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


ture. He told it well, but in the audience sat Emma Goldman 
and her secretary, Captain Reitman. Before the address | 
announced, as was my custom, that when the speaker had 
finished, the audience would have an opportunity to ask ques- 
tions, but that only one question would be permitted to each 
person unless no one else desired to ask a question. 

Emma Goldman promptly arose and put a question to the 
speaker. When answered, she immediately asked a second 
question. I then repeated the rule of the forum. But she 
declined to sit down. The audience applauded, and she bowed, 
but as they continued she realized that what they really wanted 
was to have her take her seat, which she finally did. 

Then Captain Reitman arose, and he went through the same 
performance, but he would not sit down. I called to an usher 
in the rear of the room, an Englishman who was little more 
than five feet in height and weighed less than one hundred 
pounds, and said to him: “Mr. Denton, will you please come 
up and put Captain Reitman out onto the street?” 

Now Reitman was over six feet tall and weighed over two 
hundred pounds. When the little usher very seriously ap- 
proached, without a smile, and looked up into Reitman’s 
scowling face, the audience howled with laughter, and Captain 
Reitman took his seat. 

Although the audiences were greatly interested in the dis- 
cussion of social questions, it soon became evident that their 
interest in religious problems was even more keen. Indeed, 
there was rarely a meeting of any kind at the Labor Temple 
without some manifestation of the audience’s interest in per- 
sonal religious questions. One evening, at the Tuesday night 
social problem forum, I reminded the audience of this fact, 
and said that if they really wanted to discuss religious themes, 
it might be better to set aside a special night for the purpose. 
I had them vote upon the question, reminding them that I was 
somewhat conservative in my theological views, and announc- 
ing that I would express those views whenever occasion re- 
quired. By that time the audience had become extremely 
friendly to the Labor Temple, and we respected each other so 
much that any question might have been discussed not only 


WORK OF THE LABOR TEMPLE 129 


with perfect safety but with edification to the entire audience. 

So Friday night was set aside as “religious night” at the 
Temple. Perhaps most people would have called it ‘“prayer- 
meeting” night, but the occasions at the Temple were quite 
different from those in other churches. There was something 
doing all the time. There were no pauses between ‘“‘testi- 
monies.” Indeed, there was never a moment when half a 
dozen men were not on their feet, eager to speak; and what 
they said was vital, human, real. 

One night I announced that on the following Friday there 
would be no regularly appointed speaker, but that the subject 
of ‘My Religion and Why I Believe in It” would be up for 
discussion. About three hundred men and a dozen women 
were present. The first man who spoke was a Jew who had 
become a Unitarian. He said that he had been won by the 
character and the life of Christ. 

The second was also a Jew, a Socialist. He told how he 
had been taught religion by his Russian mother, but that he 
had since studied other religions. He said: “I believe that 
love is God, shown by mercy and kindness.”’ 

Then followed a man who said that he was a Quaker by 
training, but that he now believed in the religion of the 
“mind.” He did not know where he came from, nor did he 
know where he was going, but he felt sure that the same 
Power that had brought him into being would take care of 
his destiny. 7 

“Do good and help your neighbor and consider all others 
as brothers, is my religion,” said a plain-looking workingman. 

A Roman Catholic gave an earnest testimony to the power 
of his religion, saying that, while we may disagree in dogma, 
there may still be unanimity in the broader matters of religion. 

At least a dozen strong, clearly stated three-minute speeches 
were made by Protestant workingmen who said that they had 
known the power of Jesus in their lives. They told of better 
things than mere negative morality, of victory over sin, of a 
new-found joy in the Christian life. In every case this posi- 
tive note of assurance was greeted with great applause. 

A striking indication of the tendency of the Jews who came 


130 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


to the Temple was seen in the fact that, while fifty per cent 
of those present were Hebrews, no one spoke in favor of the 
orthodox Jewish religion, although fully half of those who 
had a part in the meeting were born in that faith. 

The question was frequently asked whether there were any 
“converts” at the Labor Temple. Frankly, no effort was made 
to convert people in the ordinary sense, although undoubtedly 
hundreds of those who came to the Temple meetings got a 
fresh start in life and identified themselves with churches of 
their own selection. The organization of a church consisting 
of several hundred more Presbyterians would have been a 
very small factor in carrying out the aims of the Labor Tem- 
ple. And it was my purpose that we should be able to say to 
every audience that we were not trying to do any proselyting; 
that everybody was welcome at any service and would never 
be put in an embarrassing position by being compelled to com- 
mit himself to any system of religion. That put every visitor 
at ease, and won for us the respect also of the religious leaders 
of every creed in the community, many of whom during the 
beginnings of the Labor Temple had sent “‘spies” to our meet- 
ings to find out what we were trying to do. Protestants, par- 
ticularly city mission workers, had been noticeable among those 
present with their notebooks in the early days of this “‘hereti- 
eal” church, 

There was organized at the end of the first year’s work 
what was known as the “Labor Temple Fellowship.” 

During “Holy Week” all forums and other meetings were 
omitted and half a dozen preachers of the greatest promi- 
nence, an equal number of them progressives and conserva- 
tives, were secured to talk on the general subject, “What Was 
the Purpose of Jesus and What Is the Kingdom of God.” As 
is frequently done in evangelistic meetings, cards were dis- 
tributed among the audience each night, with this pledge printed 
upon them: 


“T accept the purpose of Jesus—I will help bring in the 
Kingdom of God.” 


WORK OF THE LABOR TEMPLE 131 


The pledge was broad enough to include the most radical 
of the Labor Temple constituency as well as the most con- 
servative Christians; and yet it was a platform upon which 
all could stand and have many things in common. 

Many hundreds of cards were signed during the week, and 
on the following Sunday night, which was Easter, 149 per- 
sons publicly joined the bor Temple F Gotha one-third 
of whom were Jews. 

It is not possible to indicate the many different forms of 
activity which the Labor Temple took on, because they were 
so numerous and far-reaching. One most interesting turn in 
its affairs was the fact that the Temple developed into a refuge 
for many workingmen’s organizations which did not care to 
meet in the only available halls, because they had in them ele- 
ments extremely distasteful to serious-minded workingmen and 
workingwomen. 

One day an Irish Catholic business agent of a trade union 
composed of women workers having a membership of eight 
hundred or more, told me the story of her experience in trying 
to find a hall that was suitable for her girls, for whom she 
seemed to have a sense of personal responsibility. When she 
had appealed to a saloon-keeper as a last resort, even he had 
turned down the organization, because he saw no prospects 
of securing any business from its women members. | 

She asked me if she might use the Labor Temple. between 
the hours of six and eight on Monday nights, and the arrange- 
ments were quickly made, the only charge being a small fee 
to pay the janitor for extra service, and the cost of the lights. 
Later, other labor unions composed of men came to the Labor 
Temple for their meetings, for the same reason. Soon it be- 
came the center for general meetings and strikers’ conferences 
because of the desire of the leaders to keep their member- 
ship sober and away from the saloons. 

An exceedingly important departure in the work of the 
Labor Temple were the meetings for the discussion of health 
problems. There was so much sickness in the tenements that 
the people were only too eager to learn what to do to prevent 


132 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


tuberculosis, cancer, children’s diseases, and other forms of 
illness which were subjecting families and friends and rela-_ 
tives to suffering. 

Of course, criticism of the Temple and its methods of work 
came very soon and it continued uninterruptedly during the 
two years through which I was in charge of the work. There 
was a bit of consolation in the fact that the criticism came 
very largely from those who had never visited the Temple 
but who would write about it in strongly anti-social religious » 
newspapers. The Temple was criticized also by “‘one hundred 
per cent American” organizations which could not see any 
value in the discussion of radical questions, forgetting that, 
as they would be discussed anyway, it was better that they 
should be talked about under steadying auspices, and at a time 
and in a place where every argument presented could be fairly 
and openly met by those who were opposed to the radical 
views expressed. 

I never cared about any attack that was made upon me by 
radicals of whatever school. I rather enjoyed an open debate 
with such opponents. But the criticism which really hurt me 
came from certain members of the Board of Home Missions 
itself. The Board as a whole had been very generous in its 
support of this work and had annually appropriated approxi- 
mately twelve thousand dollars to carry it on. But strong 
feeling was being stirred up within it, and an effort was made 
to close the Temple as conveniently and as quietly as possible. 

That would have been out of the question, because the Tem- 
ple had attracted world-wide attention on account of its un- 
doubted success. But I was moved to take decided action re- 
garding such criticisms. 

Theodore Roosevelt was Contributing Editor of The Out- 
look at that time. I called on him one Monday morning and 
told him my story. He listened for nearly an hour to the 
history of the Labor Temple. Then, characteristically, he 
slapped his knee, and said again and again: “‘That’s fine— 
that’s great—that’s what I believe in, and I’m going to help 
you.” He promptly agreed to write an editorial in The Out- 
look about the Temple. 


WORK OF THE LABOR TEMPLE = 133 


“In order to do this, Mr. Roosevelt,” I said to him, “‘it will 
be necessary for you to come down and look us over and give 
an address to the people.” 

“No,” he replied; “I will come down, but I. won’t speak. 
The way to find out what is being done is for me to hear you 
speak, but don’t you advertise the fact that I’m coming. If 
you do, I will cancel the engagement.” 

The time agreed upon for Mr. Roosevelt’s visit was Sunday 
afternoon. No announcement had been made concerning his 
appearance at the Temple, but the building was packed to the 
doors. When he and I stepped from behind the curtain at the 
side of the platform and stood before the audience, the cheer- 
ing was clamorous and continuous. 

Mr. Roosevelt persisted in his determination that I should 
do the speaking, although he did agree to say something when 
I got through. At the conclusion of my twenty-minute ad- 
dress Mr. Roosevelt spoke for nearly an hour, warming to 
the spirit of the occasion, and elaborating glowingly upon the 
work and all its possibilities, 

His editorial in The Outlook a couple of weeks later was 
a “wow.” It settled for all time the question of whether or 
not the Labor Temple was to be closed. The Temple is not 
only still running, but, instead of the old brown-stone church 
which it occupied for so many years, it has now a six-story 
building with every facility for its varied activities. 

In all the discussion regarding the Labor Temple and the 
purpose for which it was organized, I wish to keep to the fore- 
front the major fact that it was started not primarily to serve 
as a lecture or social center, but as a demonstration of what 
the Church can do in building up the whole life of the pope 
with special emphasis upon their spiritual welfare. 


XIII 


BUCKING THE RADICALS 


WE. hear a good deal these days about the uprising of the 
radicals. But I am more concerned about the down- 
sitting of the conservatives—those who are quite content 
with things as they are; who have comfortable homes, can 
afford to wear good clothes, are assured of enough to eat, can 
educate their children, and have snug little sums in the bank 
or in bonds which will provide for them in the future. 

The greatest menace to our American institutions to-day is 
not the labor agitator nor the trust magnate. ‘The greatest 
menace to society is the smug, self-satisfied middle class, the 
*“‘standpatters,” those who do not wish to be disturbed, the 
people who do not want to be compelled to face the real social | 
facts of the twentieth century. 

The labor agitator has not created the social unrest in the 
world to-day. It has created him. He has been pushed up 
from among the people to give expression to their hopes and 
aspirations. It sometimes happens that the business agent of 
a labor union, the “walking delegate,” orders a strike or creates 
a disturbance of some other kind, but preéminently it is the 
business agent’s task and concern to keep men on the job. 
He is considered the least successful business agent who is 
constantly stirring up trouble “in order to show workingmen 
‘that he is earning his salary.” There are fools and dema- 
gogues among labor officials, just as there are among other 
leaders. But they usually find their own place—outside the 
organization. 

The word “radical,’’ according to the Century dictionary, 
means “having to do with or proceeding from tke. root, | 
source, origin or foundation,’ which in other words means 
“getting at the bottom of things.” It is the common opinion 


that radicals include only those who have designs for the de- 
134 


BUCKING THE RADICALS 135 


struction of the present social order, the ‘‘reds,” the revo- 
lutionists. It often happens that this popular conception of 
radicalism is the correct one when applied to certain indi- 
viduals, but strictly speaking, one may be an extreme con- 
servative and still be a radical. A Fundamentalist, for exam- 
ple, may be a radical—so may be a Progressive—as well as 
any one who takes an extremely opposite view. 

There is no doubt that both the Fundamentalists and the 
Progressives are making a distinct contribution toward the 
progress and the development of society and my sympathies 
are to a certain extent with both groups, but in practically 
every field in which my work has been done I have been com- 
pelled to “buck” both groups in the Church, and in the indus- 
trial and social field. It did not matter much what the ques- 
tion or problem being discussed or promoted might have been, 
these extremists who always professed that they were “trving _ 
to get at the bottom of things” created trouble. 

Very early in my public eer I encountered the severest 
kind of opposition from the Socialists. They could see but 
one motive in my activities, namely, to keep workingmen sat- 
isfied with their present economic conditions. They insisted 
that I was a “tool of the capitalistic class.” They insisted 
that if I were sincere in my declarations that I was interested 
in the welfare of working people, I would see to it that the 
Church advocated Socialism, because they maintained that So- 
cialism was the economic system which Jesus taught. To 
them, any one who could not accept that doctrine was either 
a hypocrite or a fraud. As the movement which I headed 
received national publicity, the Socialistic papers “roasted’’ 
me periodically for several years, declaring that I was a men- 
ace to the working class of America. Victor Berger, who 
afterward became Congressman from Milwaukee, was par- 
ticularly vicious, first because of his Socialistic convictions, 
and secondly, because of his atheistic principles. 

Jt was amusing that while this was going on among the 
~ Socialists I had recurrent encounters with employers’ associa- 
tions, and I was systematically accused editorially by them of- 
being “a spy in the employ of the American Federation of 


136 A SON OF THK BOWERY 


Labor,” and of following up their officers and speakers 
throughout the country and holding mass meetings to coun- 
teract their influence; which, of course, was perfectly absurd. 
Upon one occasion I addressed the National Presbyterian 
Brotherhood Convention in Indianapolis. There were prob- 
ably three thousand men in the Convention coming from vari- 
ous parts of the United States. The Committee having the 
program in charge asked me to speak on “The Church and 
Labor.” At the close of the address there came a tremendous 
tempest of applause from the audience, swelling greater and 
greater, until finally, to quote from the newspaper report: 


“Man after man leaped to his feet until the whole great 
body was standing, and to the hand-clapping vociferous 
cheers were added; tears also attested the emotion of the 
crowd.” 


Now it happened that the President of the Citizens’ Alliance 
lived in that town. He was a big buggy manufacturer, and 
when his office heard about this unusual reception given a 
labor address at a Brotherhood Convention, they began to 
scurry about to see what could be done to halt the action 
which these three thousand Presbyterian men had taken, for 
they had of their own accord commissioned me to bring a 
greeting to the Convention of the American Federation of 
Labor which I was to attend in Minneapolis a few days later. 
However, the resolution stood and in due time was delivered 
to the Minneapolis Labor Convention, where I am frank to 
say the delegates rather coldly received this overture from a 
Church body, for this happened very early in my experience. 

During the first year of the Labor Temple’s establishment 
I was called upon to give a great variety of addresses in dif- 
ferent parts of New York City, particularly at open forum 
meetings during the winter. I noticed that, no matter where 
I spoke, there was a group of radicals who trailed me about 
and attempted to heckle me, in order to discredit whatever 
message I brought to my audience. Now heckling was my 
especial delight. For, in spite of the greatest liberty given to 


BUCKING THE RADICALS 137 


all kinds of audiences all over the United States, I had not 
been asked a new question in some years. At least the ques- 
tions were the same in principle. And as the man on the 
platform usually has the advantage over the man in the audi- 
ence, provided he can hold his head and can laugh with the 
crowd even when the laugh is on himself, it was usually pretty 
good fun. 

Toward the end of the winter’s work, at the close of a par- 
ticularly important meeting, a husky-looking man who had 
been standing at the rear of the auditorium saluted me as I 
was about to go out. I knew instinctively who he was—an 
official of the police force; for “by their shoes ye shall know 
them.” 

“You've been doing a lot of talking around town this win- 
ter,’ he remarked, with a smile; to which I nodded assent. 

“Well,” he said, “there wasn’t a time when you spoke any- 
where in this town but that I had a force of detectives in the 
audience. Do you remember the night at the Labor Temple,” 
he went on, “when you were bucking the I. W. W’s. and the 
rest of the radicals who were breaking into the churches? That 
night we had fifty detectives in the crowd. If anything had 
happened, we would have corralled the whole gang.” 

I remembered with much amusement that in the midst of the 
excitement that evening, when trouble seemed to threaten, the 
presiding officer had shouted to the crowd that if peace were 
not maintained instantly he would call in a policeman. From 
which I had vigorously dissented, “because,” I remarked, “we 
can handle this crowd ourselves without the aid of any ‘cop.’ ” 
It must have made the fifty policemen in the audience smile to 
think that the joke was on me. 

There was probably no part of the country which was harder 
hit by the agitation of the I. W. W. than the lumber regions 
in Washington, Oregon, Montana and Idaho, but it was alto- 
gether likely that the living conditions and other social and 
economic matters connected with the lumber industry con- 
tributed to the unrest that was developed among the timber 
workers. These workingmen were frequently run out of town 
and their organizers rather roughly handled. When it is re- 


138 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


called that practically all of the men working in the lumber 
camps were huskies and a large percentage of them foreigners 
who were easily led, the situation can readily be understood. 

Naturally, when the bona fide trade unionists began their 
activity, they were classed with the I. W. W. and many of the 
radical methods adopted by the 1. W. W. were charged against 
the trade unionists and their leaders. The result was the de- 
velopment of much bitterness on both sides, and during the 
war, when production was so necessary in the lumber industry, 
the employers organized the Loyal Legion of Loggers and 
Lumbermen, or as they were more familiarly known, “the 
four L’s.” The army officials who were closely related to the 
lumber industry at this time, particularly the Spruce Produc- 
tion Department of the United States Signal Corps, worked to- 
gether with the employers in promoting this organization and 
through most strenuous methods and unusual pressure, prac- 
. tically forty thousand men became identified with the “Four 
L’s.” Many social activities and patriotic adjuncts and in- 
numerable other features were organized to hold the men to- 
gether in order to increase production. At the close of the war 
as it became more and more difficult to appeal to the patriotic 
incentive of the men the entire situation reverted to its purely 
economic features, and to the old battles and bargaining be- 
tween the employers and men working in the mills and in the 
woods. 

At this particular period, a committee of the employers tele- 
graphed me to meet them in Chicago to talk out the situation, 
offering me the presidency of the Loyal Legion at a salary of 
ten thousand dollars per year, suggesting that if this did not 
interest me they would be glad to consider any proposal which 
I might make to them. While this discussion was going on in 
Chicago, I received telegrams from interested mutual friends 
in Oregon who urged me to accept the offer of the Lumbermen. 
One of the leading ministers telegraphed me: 


“Informed of approach to you L. L. L. L. Presidency. 
Earnestly urge weigh it as great and providential call, mar- 
velous opportunity. Great constructive statesmanlike round- 


BUCKING THE RADICALS 139 


ing out your extraordinary career in promoting a conserver 
of civilization on Pacific Coast.” 


Another telegram from a leader in civic work strongly en- 
dorsed the business men I was to meet in Chicago, saying that 
they sought to “introduce democracy and goodwill into in- 
dustry. I believe they are interesting themselves in one of the 
most significant movements of these wonderful times. Trust 
that nothing will prevent your accepting the invitation. It may 
mean large things for you and the ideals for which you stand.” 

However, it was quite obvious that fine as were the motives 
of the employers in their relationship to the men in the lum- 
ber camp, it was their avowed object to put the labor union 
out of business if it could possibly be done, as they sincerely 
believed they had something better to offer to the men. After 
giving the entire matter careful consideration, I declined the 
offer mainly because I had been so long identified with the labor 
movement in this country that my relationship to the L. L. L. L. 
would be misunderstood, and because I sincerely felt that if 
organized labor were destroyed in the lumber industry, the en- 
tire situation would be controlled by the I. W. W. and even 
more radical organizations. It surely was a great temptation 
to go to the lumber regions of the Northwest to set up a pro- 
gram which I felt would minimize the discord between em- 
ployers and employees, but I felt that the promotion of such a 
plan as I had in mind would be altogether out of the question 
in view of the position taken by the employers, however sincere 
they may have been. 

Many years ago, I read a book written by Count Leo Tolstoy, 
entitled “The Slavery of Modern Times,” which was a defense 
of philosophical Anarchy. In this book Tolstoy maintains that 
the law is the source of all evil, and that it actually invites 
its violation because men instinctively do those things which 
they are commanded not to do. He believed that the natural 
goodness of the human heart, if left to do its own will, would 
lead to a peaceful, non-combative life. 

It is usually assumed that the Anarchist is one who believes 
in the use of force. Quite the opposite is true. Tolstoy, for 


140 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


example, was a non-resistant. He took literally the command 
of Jesus, “If a man smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him 
also the left.” When a man uses force, that moment he ceases 
to be an Anarchist, according to this philosopher, because he 
himself then uses the instruments of government to which 
Anarchy is opposed. 

Traveling across the country, I once met a young Russian 
woman on the train, who frankly said that she was an Anarch- 
ist. When I looked at her in surprise, she smiled and re- 
marked, “I suppose you think that I am a bomb thrower, but 
I do not believe in force. Those who throw bombs do so 
because of the natural tendency of their own hearts. How- 
ever, in Russia, we sometimes throw bombs and use violence, 
not because we believe in force, but in order to call the attention 
of the world to our terrible situation. If we killa Grand Duke, 
for example, the newspapers everywhere will not only print 
the story of the destruction of this nobleman, but they will say 
something about the conditions against which we are protest- 
ing.” 

There is no doubt that radicalism is growing among the 
workingmen of America. We sometimes imagine that condi- 
tions in this country are so favorable for the common people 
that the “Red” aspect of many European countries can never 
be duplicated in the United States. We go blindly on, not only 
crying “ “Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace,” but “causing 
the day of violence to draw nigh.”’ 

Whatever may happen in Russia is bound to affect condi- 
tions in the United States. Indeed, the changes that are taking 
place in every country in Europe are sure to affect us sooner 
or later. 

In condemning the Bolsheviki and other revolutionists in 
Russia, we sometimes forget the tyranny through which the 
Russian people passed for four hundred years. They were sub- 
jected to the most cruel treatment which the czars and their 
secret police could devise. We have forgotten the stories 
which made our blood boil as we read about this treatment not 
many years ago,—the long marches to Siberia, the use of the 
knout, the horrors of imprisonment in filthy cells for many 


BUCKING THE RADICALS 141 


years, the hunger, the sickness, the massacre, the tearing apart 
of families, and the other horrors‘of the old Russia. 

Then, as if by magic, the submerged millions of Russia 
suddenly gained the supremacy. The Czar and his represen- 
tatives were destroyed or driven out of the country. Those 
who for centuries had been subject to the vilest treatment be- 
came the rulers. Naturally, they were drunk with their new 
power. They resorted to the extremest measures. The whole 
thing seemed so fantastic, and for some time they did the 
most absurd things in trying to perfect a government which 
would do justice to the people and bring about the reign of 
righteousness. 

The rest of the world has been too impatient with Russia. 
It is undoubtedly true that many acts of violence have been 
committed under the new régime which were just as despicable 
as many of those practiced by the czars. These cannot be con- 
doned, but we should at least try to understand the condition 
out of which the present situation in Russia evolved. 

One day, while in the House of Commons in London, I met 
Ben Tillet, the English labor leader. We began to talk about 
Russia, and I remarked that it was too bad that Russia was 
doing so many things which discredited the country in the 
eyes of the world. 

“That is none of your damn business,” he said. “What do 
you know about Russia anyway, and what they have got to 
face in that country? Neither England nor America nor any 
other country can determine the policies of the Russian gov- 
ernment at this time. They will simply have to fight out their 
own battles and nobody else can do it for them. They'll come 
out all right. You just leave them alone.” 

This, of course, was characteristic of Tillet, the fire-eating 
labor leader, but there seemed to be a lot of good horse sense 
in what he said. One cannot help sympathizing with the Rus- 
sian masses, and because they deserve our sympathy we can 
overlook many of the mistakes which they have made and will 
make. It must be remembered that practically every prominent 
leader in Russia to-day has spent many years in Siberian prisons 
and that many of them have endured untold suffering because 


142 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


of their political and economic convictions. If they were ready 
to go to prison because of their ideals, one can at least accept 
the statement that they are sincere in their present desire to 
bring order out of the chaos which now prevails in Russia. 

If the horrors of revolution are not to be duplicated in 
America, however, we must set our own house in order. We 
must break down class consciousness and class war and abolish 
class hatred. Combinations of employers and capitalists to 
fight labor only help to produce a revolution. ‘They sow the 
seed of Bolshevism. 

The tendency to use the courts and injunctions to produce 
“harmony” is based upon fear and force; and force and fear 
never will produce good economic relationships any more than 
they will help friendship between individuals. The power of 
labor to stop industry, often because of disagreement among 
contending unions, is not conducive to industrial peace, but 
rather brings contempt upon the entire labor movement, and is 
of a piece with the employer’s efforts to gain his ends by the 
lockout and the personal boycott. 

John D. Rockefeller, Jr., remarked to me in conversation 
that the big man of the future in the industrial world will not 
be the promoter, or the efficiency man, but the one who can 
bring about right relationships between employers and em- 
ployees; the man who, on the one hand, can interpret the men 
to the bosses, and, on the other hand, interpret the bosses to 
the men. 

On general principles it is better to understand a man than 
it is to silence him; and this refers to movements as well as 
individuals. New York State expelled five Socialists from its 
Legislature in spite of the protests of some of the leading 
jurists of America, including so eminent a conservative as Jus- | 
tice Charles E. Hughes. The East-Siders in New York, who 
had elected them and who had been urged to use ballots instead 
of bullets, wondered what had happened to our democratic 
government. Not satisfied with this action, the opponents of 
Socialism introduced measures which would prohibit any man 
or woman who declared himself in favor of Socialism from 
receiving a diploma to practice law. There is far more danger 


BUCKING THE RADICALS 143 


in this kind of repression than in the mouthings of the worst 
“radical” this side of Russia. 

Neither is the unrest of the world going to be cured by 
making fun of anybody, as I learned by experience. You can- 
not cartoon or lampoon out of existence social inequalities and 
economic injustices. Neither can they be eliminated through 
absent treatment. There must be a spirit of brotherhood 
among all classes of men. 

The growing restlessness and radicalism among the work- 
ingmen of America have been quite obvious to me as I have 
attended the annual conventions of the American Federation of 
Labor and have seen the growth of Socialistic strength. Nor 
is this social unrest limited to workingmen. It is seen as never 
before among the semi-professional class and the “white- 
collar” group. 

The cause is not the reason generally assigned to it. The 
labor agitator is not responsible for it. Neither is it the power 
of wealth or land monopoly or abject poverty. These have 
always existed in greater measure than they do to-day. The 
workingman is unquestionably better off than he has ever been, 
but he has never been more dissatisfied than he is to-day. 

This social unrest is caused, first of all, by our public 
libraries. Not that the library contains books on Bolshevism 
and radicalism, which workingmen eagerly read, for ordinarily 
the committees in charge of the selection of the books see to it 
- that they are not placed within the workers’ reach. But the 
workers are being incited to new ways of thinking and living 
by books on democracy, government, history, and economics, 
and they read these voraciously. The librarian of one of our 
large cities said recently that if present tendencies continue, the 
workingmen will be the only educated people in America. 

Art galleries are responsible for social unrest, for here ideals 
are stimulated. When the workingman looks at the wonderful 
pictures and works of art contained in these art galleries and 
goes out the front door, he is not the same man he was when 
he came in. His outlook upon life has been enlarged. He 
wants a better home, a better education for his children, better 
clothes for his wife, and more leisure for himself. These 


= 


144 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


usually require higher wages and shorter hours. The average 
workingman does not envy the rich man’s wealth, but he does 
envy the rich man’s leisure,—his chance to enjoy things. 

Universities and public schools cause social unrest. There 
is no group which responds more readily to the appeal for 
service among the workers than do the men and women in our 
colleges. The classes in the social sciences are crowded with 
eager students, and they are ready to preach and work for 
better social and economic conditions. 

Big business in its advertising causes social unrest. It is 
constantly urging working people through full-page advertise- 
ments to purchase and enjoy better things, better houses, better _ 
clothes, better automobiles, better everything. The advertising 
manager who would dare permit himself to believe that work- 
ing people should be satisfied with the things that they now 
possess would promptly lose his job. 

Prohibition causes social unrest. Incidentally, the leading 
Socialists of the world have always been Prohibitionists. The 
best set of resolutions on Prohibition in this country were 
adopted not by the Anti-Saloon League or by the W.C.T.U. 
or by any other temperance society. They were adopted by 
the Socialists. The reason that the Socialists favor Prohibi- 
tion is because they argue that before workingmen are in a 
position to become very much disturbed about their economic 
conditions, they must first of all have sober minds, and that 
the use of strong drink prevents clear thinking. One of the 
last things done by the Russian Czar was to abolish vodka, 
but almost the first thing the Russians did when they sobered 
up was to abolish the Czar. 

The Church causes social unrest. The early disciples were 
arrested for preaching a doctrine which was turning the world 
upside down. Foreign missionaries to-day point out the low 
physical, mental, and moral conditions under which the 
“heathen” are living, and then show them the possibilities of a 
life in Jesus. And as they catch a vision of all that He may 
mean to them, there comes among them a spirit of social un- 
rest which will not be satisfied until they have broken the bands 
which bound them through many a century. 


BUCKING THE RADICALS 145 


‘Social unrest, therefore, is the legitimate outcome of the 
finest idealism the world has ever known. Without it there 
can be no real progress. It must also be obvious that it is im- 
possible to stop the progress of social unrest. No army or 
navy can suppress the people in their desire to advance their 
social and economic interests. 

There will always be some social unrest in the world. The 
labor question will never be settled until the last day’s work | 
is done. For our solution of it will be unsatisfactory to the 
next generation because their ideals will be higher than ours. 
“Radicalism,’’—which for the most part means anything that 
_most of us never thought of before, is not only tied up with 
economic progress, but it is an important factor in moral and 
spiritual development. This is what makes it so hard to dis- 
tinguish between the good and the bad in it. But don’t let us 
shut our eyes to the good because of our prejudice against 
everything that is new and different. There is one great chance 
in all this agitation for the man and woman with broad sym- 
pathies and a big heart,—the chance for unselfish leadership. 
The real danger is that the new democracy which will emerge 
will be dominated by a spirit of gross materialism. This would 
be worse than unfortunate,—it would be disastrous,—for all 
of us. Only the right kind of leadership can prevent such a 
catastrophe. 


XIV 


PROMOTING NATIONAL MOVEMENTS 


| Shak several years before the war the challenge of “‘one 
million immigrants a year’ had been sounded by philan- 
thropic and religious agencies in the United States in their at- 
tempts to secure support for their work, it being assumed that 
the “million” immigrants who were annually landing in the 
- United States were increasing their work by just so much. It 
_ was during this period that the peak of immigration to this 
country had been reached. It appeared that America was being 
flooded by the foreign-born and that for the most part, those 
who were coming to this country were very undesirable. 

Immigration conferences were being held by so-called ex- 
perts, who, apparently, could see nothing but peril in the men 
and women who were coming to our shores for a chance to 
make a living. 

In most of this discussion, one important element not con- 
sidered was the fact that many millions of those who came to 
this country returned to the Fatherland and that in some mys- 
terious way, long before periods of industrial depression had 
affected the country as a whole, the immigrants, like a barom- 
eter, seemed to sense what was impending, and shipload after 
shipload went back home where it was cheaper to live than in 
the United States, thus relieving the labor market of conges- 
tion which might otherwise have greatly harmed the American 
workingman. ; 

The result was that the actual percentage of foreign-born in 
the United States at any one time did not vary more than one 
degree above or below fourteen, at least since 1860, and that 
the percentage of foreign-born in the United States was lower 
in 1920 than it had been in sixty years and this was before the 


immigration restriction act was passed by Congress. 
146 


PROMOTING MOVEMENTS 147 


Here are the figures: 1860, 13.2 per cent; 1870, 14.4 per 
cent; 1880, 13.3 per cent; 1890, 14.8 per cent; 1900, 13.7 
per cent; 1910, 14.4 per cent; 1920, 13.1 per cent. 

It was while the agitation regarding the peril of the immi- 
grant was at its height that I was asked in addition to my 
position as Superintendent of the Department of Church and 
Labor of the Presbyterian Church to become the Superintendent 
of its Immigration Department, presumably as the logical man 
to undertake the work: First, because the Labor Department 
had proven to be so successful, second, because practically all 
immigrants were workingmen, and third, because for the most 
part the immigrant was a city “problem” and practically all of © 
my activities were centered in the city. The immigration work 
was afterward turned over to Dr. William P. Shriver, who 
has since developed it in a most statesmanlike manner. 

In addition to this national undertaking, I was appointed 
Superintendent of the Immigration Committee for New York 
City. New York presented an especially interesting situation 
in this respect, because its foreign-born whites at least equaled 
the foreign-born in Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, Cleveland, 
Pittsburgh, St. Louis and Baltimore combined. 

Immediately after my appointment to this task, the Board 
of Home Missions under whose general supervision all of this 
work was being conducted, was instructed to make a. special 
investigation of the Jewish question, and to begin aggressive 
work in trying to win the Jews to Presbyterianism. | 

I had very little sympathy with this resolution because my 
twenty years’ experience in the tenements on the East Side of 
New York, where so many of my friends and neighbors were 
Jews, had given me a very high regard for their general 
character. | 

However, I was commissioned to go to Europe to study the 
Jewish missions which had been so highly spoken of among 
those who were especially interested in this enterprise. Dur- ° 
ing this trip I visited practically every organization of the~ 
kind in the larger cities and interviewed many of their leaders, . 
and I was convinced that they were practically all of them 
failures. Their social and medical work was to be commended, © . 


148 A. SON OF THE BOWERY 


but only on a broad humanitarian basis, just as it might be 
for any other group of people. The religious aspects of their 
activities, however, seemed to me to be extremely questionable. 

When I returned from this study, I called a conference of 
about fifty leading workers in this field and made my report. 
{ expressed myself as being altogether opposed to Jewish 
missions as such, and especially all efforts to capture Jewish 
children through Sunday schools without first securing the con- 
sent of their parents. 

I was further persuaded that any Protestant church situated 
in a district in which Jews were living should conduct its own 
work upon a community basis and that it was a mistake to 
single out any race or religion in an attempt to proselyte its 
people from their original faith. 

It was also quite clear to me that it was fatal to try to make 
a poor Protestant out of a good Jew and that the Protestants 
had all they could do in the average city mission territory to 
take care of their own people who were indifferent to the 
Church without attempting to proselyte Jews and Catholics. 

I was altogether opposed to the appropriation of any funds 
for distinctly Jewish work, although apparently there were 
many earnest-minded people in the Church, basing their belief 
upon prophecy, who were persuaded that it was the solemn 
duty of the Church “‘to win Jews to Christ.” At any rate, the 
result of my study and observation, together with the con- 
clusions presented to the conference, ended in a practical dis- 
continuance of the effort to establish a Jewish Department. 

My experience since that time has intensified my convic- 
tions on this question and one of the most gratifying features 
in religious work to-day is the attempt on the part of Protestant 
and Jewish leaders to work out their problems upon a common 
platform and in the spirit of brotherhood. Jewish rabbis are 
lecturing in Protestant theological seminaries on race relations 
as exchange professors, and Christian ministers are speaking 
to Jewish colleges and institutions on the brotherhood of races. 
In New York City, the West End Presbyterian Church, sup- 
posed to be one of the most conservative churches in the city, 
recently presented a near-by synagogue with an American flag 


PROMOTING MOVEMENTS 149 


and the synagogue reciprocated by presenting the church with 
a pulpit Bible. 

One day there appeared at my office a Ruthenian by the 
name of John Bodrug, who looked like a second Martin Luther. 
He told me a story of the falling away from the Greek Catholic 
Church of thousands upon thousands of his fellow countrymen, 
who after they arrived in the United States found themselves 
altogether out of sympathy with the way the Church was 
being conducted here. 

He declared that the national heroes of his country,—those 
whom the people even to this day revered,—were Protestants, 
and that if he were given the opportunity he could inaugurate 
a campaign which would enlist large numbers of those who 
it happened were not now attending any church. 

His proposal appealed to me and I secured a comparatively 
small appropriation with which he might print song books and 
classical literature to be used in his promotional work. He 
also wanted the use of one of our chapels, which was readily 
granted. 

We placed in charge of this particular chapel service, a young 
Ruthenian who was a student in one of our seminaries. It 
was agreed that the Ruthenians were to continue the use of 
some of the Greek Catholic forms and ceremonies, The young 
minister also wore a robe which, of course, was gaily em- 
broidered, as was the custom in the old country. This, how- 
ever, was too much for some of our conservative friends. They 
immediately entered a vigorous protest against the use of any- 
thing that had been employed in the Greek Catholic Church, 
insisting that these Ruthenians, who, by the way, had been 
accustomed to worship in some of the most beautiful cathedrals 
in Europe, must now be content with the bare walls and cheap 
furniture of the East Side mission hall whose use we had given 
them. 

Actually, so far as fundamentals were concerned, there was 
nothing in the service which could be counted objectionable. 
But it was no use. The storm of protest became so great that 
the national organization was compelled to surrender the work, 
although it was carried on locally by the churches in several 


150 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


near-by cities. Again narrowness and bigotry prevented the 
accomplishment of what might have developed into a most 
useful piece of work. 

Only the other day this same Ruthenian, who nearly twenty 
years ago began the humble preaching service in the chapel 
referred to, came to my office and told me almost breathlessly 
of the situation among the Ukrainians from whose country 
he had just returned. Because of an edict of the head of 
the Church that priests were no longer allowed to marry, and 
because many other restrictions had been placed upon them, 
the people were now rebelling against all authority, and there 
was a general uprising among the Ukrainians, who were for- 
merly known as Ruthenians. They were now appealing to the 
United States to send Protestant ministers who could lead 
them in their religious activities. Apparently, this situation 
has in part grown out of the war, with the division of the 
nation, and the coming in of a new spirit of independence 
among the people. It remains to be seen whether the Protes- 
tants of the United States will be big enough to handle this 
situation in an entirely non-sectarian spirit, having only a 
sincere desire to help a People which so far as one can see is 
earnestly looking for light. 

Believing that a large number of the foreign-born in the 
United States were being handicapped in their social, economic 
arid religious progress because they were not understood by 
Americans, who simply regarded them as “problems,” I sug- 
gested about fifteen years ago a plan whereby the best type of 
students in the universities and seminaries be sent to certain 
foreign countries so that they might study the manner of life 
of the people among whom they would later work in this coun- 
try. This plan has since been successfully worked out, and 
many of these men are now leaders in their particular fields. 

The passage of the immigration restriction law has by no 
means settled the question of what we shall do with the men 
and women who still desire to come to this country, or even 
those allotted numbers who arrive under the present quota. 
During the year 1924, for example, over 700,000 immigrants 
arrived in the United States, although some returned. Even 


PROMOTING MOVEMENTS 151 


if all the immigration to this country were stopped, there would 
still be 14,000,000 foreign-born in the United States, with 
2,000,000 of them concentrated in New York City alone—one- 
seventh of the total number living in the United States. We 
have yet to work out an intelligent and sympathetic program 
which shall deal with the foreign-born men and women in our 
country. 

It should not be forgotten that the immigrant bears the 
brunt of our industrial life. In many of our leading industries 
he composes eighty per cent of the workers. He often as- 
sumes tasks which others will not undertake because of their 
monotony and discomfort. He comes here full-fledged, his 
native country having paid all the expense of his education and 
physical development. No country in the world has been so 
richly blessed in the free gift of ready-made manhood as has 
America. 

The immigrant must be made to understand that the word 
“government” means friend, not oppressor; that while there 
are certain “classes” in America,—although not in the sense 
that they are to be found in the countries from which he came, 
—it is possible for him to break through into the “upper” 
classes. He must be shown that this country is a democracy in 
which every man has a chance to make good, and that this op- 
portunity depends entirely upon his character and personality. 
He must be taught that America offers him free education; 
that there are better jobs ahead; that the padrones and contrac- 
tors with whom he is familiar are not always typical Ameri- 
cans ; that the city tenement in which he lives does not comprise 
the home life which may be attained in this country; that the 
vote which will be given him when he has acquired citizenship 
is a precious heritage, fought for, by the forefathers of this 
country and paid for in blood, and that it must not be lightly 
regarded. 

While my chief interest had always been in the cities, and 
while perhaps I knew most about their problems, I had a 
strong conviction that one of the most serious situations 
challenging the attention of the Church and the State was life 
in the country. My study of the city revealed the fact that 


152 A. SON OF THE BOWERY 


great agricultural states were gradually losing their popula- 
tion because of the growth of industrial centers and the inevi- 
table attraction which these had for the young people on the 
farms. I found, for example, that from 1900 to 1910, the 
percentages of counties losing population in some of the prin- 
cipal agricultural states were as follows: 

Iowa 71.7 per cent, Missouri 61.7 per cent, Indiana 60.9 
per cent, Illinois 49.0 per cent, Ohio 44.3 per cent, Tennessee 
38.5 per cent, Kentucky 36.1 per cent, Pennsylvania, 28.4 per 
cent, Virginia 27.4 per cent. Were it not for the increase in 
the population of the nine cities in Michigan having 25,000 
inhabitants and over, the state would have actually gone back- 
ward during this period. From 1900 to 1910 the population 
of the United States as a whole increased 21.0 per cent, whereas 
the rural population increased only 11.2 per cent. In 1880 
about 70 per cent of the population lived in rural districts, 
whereas in 1920 less than half the population of the United 
States lived in these areas. The tendency toward the city is 
still going on. From 1910 to 1920 the increase in the urban 
population of the United States was 28.8 per cent, whereas 
the rural population increased only 3.2 per cent. 

One of the factors which first called my attention to the 
significance of the country-life problem was the report issued 
_ by Theodore Roosevelt’s Country Life Commission. This 
Commission was one of exploration rather than of or- 
ganization. It did not attempt a complete analysis of the sit- 
uation; it simply sought to place the entire problem before the 
people. It suggested that Congress provide some means or 
agency for the guidance of public opinion towards the develop- 
ment of a real rural society that shall rest directly on the land. 
It is significant that the Commission did not discuss the “back 
to the land’? movement. Professor Liberty H. Bailey inti- 
mated at about this time that the country life movement must 
be sharply distinguished from the present popular “back to the 
land” agitation. The latter was primarily a city or town im- 
pulse, expressing the desire of the townspeople to escape, or of 
cities to find relief, or of real estate dealers to sell land, and 
in part it was a result of the doubtful propaganda to decrease 


PROMOTING MOVEMENTS 153 


the cost of living by sending more persons to the land on the 
generally incorrect assumption that more products would 
thereby be secured for the world’s markets, 

The movement of city men to the country affords no - solu- 
tion of country problems. In the last analysis the country must 
solve its own problems. There is a new movement to send the 
incompetent to the country, but the country does not need him 
any more than does the city, and he can do no better in the 
field than he can in the town. Furthermore, the labor that the 
city could supply with profit to the country is the very labor 
that it is good for the city to keep. 

Without going into a discussion of the economic aspects of 
the country-life question, one can readily see that this situation 
was, and it is increasingly, one of the most serious that affects 
our national prosperity. Because of all the elements involved, 
I suggested to the Presbyterian Board of Home Missions that 
a Country Life Department be established and recommended 
that one of my associates in the Labor Department be placed 
in charge of it, and for some time afterward a very consider- 
able part of the budget assigned to the Department was used 
for the promotion of this newer agency which soon grew 
under the very capable leadership of Dr. Warren H. Wilson, 
who is to-day one of the outstanding figures in the Country 
Life Movement. His unusual training in the economic field 
made him particularly effective among country educational 
and religious leaders. | 

However, this Department was probably criticized fully as 
much as the Department of Church and Labor. The idea of | 
the Church presuming to lead farmers in Institutes for the 
development of their fields was ridiculed. It was absurd, these 
critics said, for a minister to try to tell a farmer how to raise 
his crops to advantage. Of course, it was forgotten that for 
the most part the function of the minister in this respect was 
to bring into the community the experts who could instruct 
farmers in the multitudinous tasks which confronted them and 
to direct them in an occupation which was rapidly becoming a 
science requiring trained workers. This Country Life Depart- 
ment had about the same experience that the Church and Labor 


154 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


Department encountered. Others were quite willing that we 
should make the experiment, and after the principles had been 
worked out and most of the battles fought, other denominations 
trailed behind and organized similar departments. 

Reference was made in a previous chapter to the Men and 
Religion Forward Movement, whose surveys I made and whose 
Social Service Department I headed up. It was most interest- 
ing that when Fred B. Smith and his associates made their 
plans for this Movement, they completely ignored the subject 
of Social Service. They had in mind Departments for Evan- 
gelism, Boys’ Work, Missions, Bible Study and Community 
Extension—the latter including shop and open air meetings. 
Finally, however, it was conceded that as there was so much 
interest in Social Service throughout the Church, it must be 
included, and I was sent for to set up a program in this field 
for the Movement. It transpired that in connection with the 
work of all the various teams Social Service was the outstand- 
ing subject in every one of the close to one hundred cities vis- 
ited, the general interest and attendance being largest at the 
conferences and mass meetings held to discuss social problems. 

During the year following the Men and Religion Forward 
Movement, it became my task to promote a national campaign 
to present to the churches of America the outstanding social 
and religious problems which faced the churches of America. 
This campaign was held under the auspices of thirty-six na- 
tional denominational boards and centered in what was known 
as “Home Mission Week.” Paralleling one of the most excit- 
ing Presidential campaigns in the history of American life and 
coming hot upon its heels, this event stood out as the most 
conspicuous movement conducted by the Churches during the 
year. It was unique in that it touched the remotest church in 
the country, as well as the biggest church in town. No itinerat- 
ing “agitators” were employed, each Church standing as a 
unit with the largest opportunity for working out individual 
plans. The central office corresponded with representatives 
in nearly 2500 cities having a population of 2500 and over, 
for the purpose of organizing local committees which should 
have charge of arrangements for the week’s meetings, espe- 


PROMOTING MOVEMENTS 155 


cially with regard to the program for the final Sunday night, 
when great Home Mission demonstrations were held. Definite 
reports regarding these meetings were received from over 
1000 cities. Twenty-two out of the twenty-eight largest cities 
in the country conducted campaigns of some kind. Over two 
hundred speakers of national reputation addressed especially 
organized meetings at strategic points, although many thou- 
sands of local ministers and laymen gave addresses during the 
week. Previous to the week itself, a preliminary campaign of 
three months was conducted and articles were prepared for the 
religious press, the labor papers, the metropolitan newspapers, 
the country papers, the missionary magazines, and the Sunday- 
school journals with feature articles in leading magazines of 
the country. At least one hundred different articles on the 
major subjects were thus given wide distribution. Six hun- 
dred thousand posters dealing with modern American problems 
were sent to the Protestant churches of America. They were 
also distributed to all the colleges and universities, all of the 
theological seminaries, and all of the Young Men’s and Young 
Women’s Christian Associations of the United States, and a 
quarter of a million post-cards were used during the campaign, 
with an equal number of Home Mission stickers, besides a 
million leaflets of various kinds. 

Study classes, conferences and meetings of every descrip- 
tion and for all kinds of people were conducted. Undoubtedly 
the public realized, for the first time perhaps, what the real task 
of the churches of America actually was; that this task was 
not only unsectarian but that it affected every aspect of life 
on the American continent. It dealt with the problems of 
the city, of the country, of women and children in industry, 
the immigrant, the Negro, the Indian, the Spanish American, 
and with the new frontiers of American life, not only geo- 
graphical but sociological. The Church as a social agency and 
as a great religious force was presented graphically, and through 
this nation-wide movement the agencies represented in this 
campaign were given a hearing before the public which they 
had never had before,—and a score of National Board secre- 
taries so testified. 


156 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


The Inter-Church World Movement was one of the most 
boldly conceived enterprises in the history of the Protestant 
Church. Its promoters had a vision of Protestant America 
working together for the accomplishment of a common task 
upon a broad non-sectarian basis, although each denomination 
was to remain intact and to develop its own work as it 
thought best. But the presentation of the conditions to be met 
by these churches was to be unified and advertised in the most 
dramatic manner possible. And this was done to a very con- 
siderable extent. The budget which was to be raised for these 
combined Protestant organizations through the Inter-Church 
World Movement amounted to one billion dollars. Some of 
the greatest men in America were enlisted in this movement 
and “‘big business’ methods were applied to every department. 
Perhaps this was one reason why it failed; it became top- 
heavy with organization and impossibilities were expected of 
its managers. It was charged that the movement failed be- 
cause, having attacked the steel industry through one of its 
departments, the big financial interests of this country decided 
to destroy it. I question whether this was true. It may have 
been a factor in some local communities, but John D. Rocke- 
feller, Jr., spent at least one million dollars in promoting the 
movement and stayed loyally by it to the end. The enterprise 
undoubtedly failed because of the lack of something within 
the organization itself, or else it was due to the failure of local 
churches to respond. 

The chief promoter of the Inter-Church World Movement 
was S. Earl Taylor, who had so successfully promoted the 
Centenary Movement in the Methodist Episcopal Church, in 
which something like one hundred and fifty million dollars was 
raised for a five-year budget. I had the good fortune to be 
associated with Earl Taylor during nine months of the Cen- 
tenary Movement, editing pamphlet publicity material and 
being responsible for a large amount of the publicity in con- 
nection with the Million Dollar Exposition at Columbus, which 
again was one of the most dramatic things ever done by any 
religious denomination. During the month that this Exposi- 
tion was in operation in Columbus, I edited a daily four-page 


PROMOTING MOVEMENTS 157 


supplement of the Ohio State Journal, having half-a-dozen 
newspaper men and women working with me in its production. 

A corps of about twenty survey men had been employed for 
some time by the Inter-Church World Movement to draw 
up a document to be presented at a meeting of thirteen hun- 
dred laymen from various parts of the United States, to whom 
the billion dollar program of the movement was to be sold at a 
meeting to be held in Atlantic City. The time for the Atlantic 
City meeting was perilously close and the reports of the survey 
men had not been presented. One day while in Pittsburgh, 
I received a long distance telephone message from New York, 
asking me if I would drop all of my other work, and spend 
night and day in shaping up and editing materials to be put 
into this important document which was to deal with great 
American social and religious problems, such as the city, 
country-life, immigration, the Negro, the exceptional popu- 
lations, and about half a dozen other groupings. I had secured 
materials on all of these subjects during the years that I had 
been connected with various national organizations and enter- 
prises, besides which I had written several books dealing with 
them. I had been careful to keep this matter up to date, and it 
was felt by the promoters of the Inter-Church World Move- 
ment that I could quickly get together the necessary data for 
the big meeting in Atlantic City. I spent fully a month in 
working out this material, making graphs, interpreting statistics 
and writing large portions of the book which was to contain 
the salesmanship material to get across the idea of the move- 
ment at this meeting, codperating with Ralph E. Diffendorfer, 
who had charge of the entire job, and who deserves great credit 
for the fine way in which he handled it. 

Now comes the interesting part of the story. When the 
thirteen hundred laymen were gathered together on the Steel 
Pier at Atlantic City, the chairman of the meeting in opening 
the session, held in his hand the finished volume upon which 
I had spent nights and days during the preceding four or five 
weeks, and holding it up before this representative audience of 
business men, he said: 

“I have here the finest presentation on American social and 


158 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


religious conditions that I have ever seen, and I want you to 
meet the men who are responsible for it.” 

He turned to the twenty odd survey men on the platform and 
asked them to rise, and they received a tremendous ovation 
from the men in the audience. The billion-dollar program was 
“sold” to the laymen that day. 

In connection with the Inter-Church World Movement there 
was held some time later a meeting of five hundred representa- 
tive laymen who sat for three days in a meeting in a Pittsburgh 
hotel to work out a message to the laymen of America. I had 
been especially invited to attend this meeting, and the managers 
had offered to pay my expenses. I preferred, however, to pay 
my own railroad fare and hotel bills and be just one of the 
crowd. A special committee of twenty-one was appointed to 
prepare the message and I was asked to serve as “‘advisor’’ to 
the Committee, though not a part of it. When this Committee 
met for its first session, the acting chairman, Fleming H. 
Revell of New York City, a prominent Presbyterian layman, 
remarked to the Committee: 

“Mr. Stelzle is here with us and I am sure we will be very 
glad to have his opinion as to what should be included in this 
message.” 

Whereupon, a Methodist brother,—an insurance man from 
the Middle West,—arose and vigorously protested against my 
speaking. 

“The preachers of this country have been handing out cut- 
and-dried stuff to us too long, and this is going to be an honest- 
to-goodness laymen’s job. We don’t want any paid officer of a 
religious organization telling us laymen what we ought to 
Says: 

I was very glad at this point to be able to tell the brother 
that I was not an official of any religious organization, that 
I was working out my own promotional tasks in New York 
City upon an independent basis and that I had paid all my own 
expenses in coming to the meeting, also that I had nothing to 
put across with this Committee, and that I sat in with this sub- 
committee, missing the main meetings, only at the request of 
their chairman. 


PROMOTING MOVEMENTS 159 


After the sub-committee had threshed out matters for an 
hour or more, without producing much of an original char- 
acter, the chairman, with a smile, again said: 

“May we now hear from Mr. Stelzle?’’—to which there was 
general assent. 

At the close of this first session the various members of the 
Committee were asked to put into writing whatever they de- 
sired to have incorporated in the report which was to be sub- 
mitted to the main body on the last day of its meeting, and I 
was requested to reproduce what I had said in the open 
conference. 

My material constituted about nine-tenths of the whole. 
Then came the task of writing it. The job was assigned to a 
committee of five, of which I was again appointed an “ad- 
visory” member. When the Committee got together with the 
mass of material before it, the chairman, who was a Denver 
lawyer, glancing at me with something of a smile, remarked: 

“T hate to put it up to you, Stelzle, after what our Metho- 
dist brother said yesterday, but you are the only man on this 
Committee who can do this job and I am going to ask the Com- 
mittee to put the whole thing in your hands to shape it up for 
submission to the general committee at breakfast at eight 
o'clock to-morrow morning.” 

I immediately got to work and sat up until four o’clock the 
next morning, writing out by hand a three-thousand-word 
statement and read it to the Committee at breakfast a few 
hours later. The report was unanimously approved with slight 
corrections, and was turned over to three stenographers at nine 
o’clock, in order to prepare it for the meeting which was to be 
in session at ten o’clock, when the report was to be read by 
Mr. Revell, its chairman. 

When Mr. Revell was given the first few sheets as he 
ascended the platform, he turned to me and said: 

“Stelzle, you ought to read this report because you wrote 
it and it is practically all your stuff.’ 

Messengers were despatched to the platform as each sheet 
was typed, until the entire document had been delivered to 
the assembled laymen. 


160 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


And this was the document that went out to the laymen of 
America, which was prepared “‘in the name of the five hundred 
representative laymen” who had come to Pittsburgh for that 
purpose. 

The Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America 
had its origin in the persistent efforts of Dr. Elias B. Sanford, 
with whom I first became acquainted when he was Secretary 
of the Open and Institutional Church League, about thirty 
years ago. It was at his invitation that I gave my first con- 
vention address in Worcester, Mass., at a meeting of the 
Institutional Church League talking on “Boys’ Clubs.” I had 
just written a book on this subject, but I felt myself greatly 
honored to speak to the most prominent leaders in institutional 
church work in America. 

Dr. Sanford organized the Federal Council in 1908. I 
recall how he traveled from city to city trying to enlist support 
in what seemed to everybody else like an iridescent dream. 
His office consisted of two tiny rooms in New York and for 
a long time he was without a telephone or even a buzzer to call 
his “secretary.” The letterhead of the Council was a formi- 
dable-looking document, containing the names of some of the 
most outstanding preachers and laymen in the Protestant 
Churches. “Commissions” were appointed which were to deal 
with important American problems. 

Dr. Frank Mason North was the chairman of the Commis- 
sion on Social Service. I was appointed as its voluntary 
secretary. For a long time this was practically the only Com- 
mission that was active, and during the year that I was its 
secretary, I conducted the activities of the Commission in ad- 
dition to my responsibilities with the Presbyterian Board of 
Home Missions. The work consisted largely of enlisting the 
interest of other denominations in social service work and in 
making certain studies of social and industrial conditions and 
problems. 

The work of the Commission became so important that the 
services of a full-time secretary on a salary basis was required, 
and Dr. Charles S. Macfarland, who had been active in New 
England as a Congregational minister and lecturer on social 


a 


PROMOTING MOVEMENTS 161 


questions, was selected for this work. Dr. Macfarland filled 
this position with great distinction for several years, and in 
1912 became the General Secretary of the Federal Council, 
succeeding Dr. Sanford, who has since served as Honorary 
Secretary. 

While serving as voluntary secretary of the Federal Coun- 
cil’s Social Service Commission, I made a first-hand study of ° 
industrial conditions in South Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. 
While as a general thing I believe it inadvisable for the Church 
to interfere with the economic aspects of business, there are 
occasions when a distinctly moral question is involved and 
when the Church cannot keep out and be entirely consistent 
with its avowed declarations regarding the rights of men and 
women in industry. Such seemed to be the case when early in 
1910 three machinists in the Bethlehem Steel Works were dis- 
charged for protesting in behalf of their fellows against Sun- 
day labor, thus precipitating one of the most notable strikes in 
this country. They not only raised issues which concerned the 
nine thousand men employed in the steel works, but brought to 
the attention of the American public certain industrial problems 
which could not be settled by capital and labor alone. Organ- 
ized labor had nothing whatever to do with inaugurating the 
strike. As a matter of fact, when the strike began, so far as 
is known, practically none of the employees of the Bethlehem 
Steel Works was a member of any labor organization. 

It was felt that the Social Service Commission of the Federal 
Council of the Churches of Christ in America, had a definite 
responsibility in securing the facts regarding this case, and I 
was appointed chairman of a special committee to proceed to 
South Bethlehem to make the investigation, interview the man- 
agers of the plant, the leaders of the men on strike, the Minis- 
terial Association, and such other groups as were directly in- 
terested. Associated with me on this committee were Dr. 
Josiah Strong, one of the pioneers in the field of Social Service 
and the Church, and Paul U. Kellogg, editor of The Survey. 
The committee was assisted in its investigation and in the 
preparation of its report by John A. Fitch, who had made the 
famous survey of the steel industry in Pittsburgh and who 


162 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


was then connected with the New York State Department of 
Labor. It was interesting that in one of the original petitions 
sent to the Company for the final adjustment of the strike, 
the men signed their names in a circle so that it would be im- 
possible to tell which was the leader. 

The labor press of the country had given much publicity 
to the statement that the efforts of the strikers to secure one 
day’s rest in seven had failed to receive the aid of the churches 
and the ministers in South Bethlehem. The general organizer 
of the American Federation of Labor had made three different 
charges against the Church. The first was that it had given no 
aid to the men “‘who were fighting for a great moral issue” ; 
second, that “it is publicly known that the Church can collect 
its fees and dues through the corporations themselves, the com- 
pany taking the money out of the payroll of the laboring men 
without their consent and paying it over to the clergy, and that 
there was a standing offer to all of the ministers by the Bethle- 
hem Steel Company to have the church dues collected through 
the company’s offices’”’; and, third, “‘that the Protestant Minis- 
terial Association as a body practically championed the cause 
of the corporation.” 

The Committee brought together the Protestant Ministerial 
Association and the Federation of Labor organizer. When I 
met this organizer in the lobby of the hotel ithe night before, 
and asked him to attend this conference, he said that he would 
do so, but that he would keep his hands over his pockets be- 
cause he was afraid that “those damned preachers” would take 
away from him whatever money he might have with him, and 
when at the conference it was proven that substantially every 
statement he had made regarding the ministers was untrue, he 
arose and was about to stalk out of the room, hurling back a 
most insulting remark, when I grabbed him by the collar, 
forced him to sit down and told him to stay there until we got 
through with him. He remained there for three hours and 
when the meeting adjourned he was thoroughly wilted with the 
drubbing that had been given him. 

It was shown at the Conference that, several years before, 
the churches had held a mass meeting in the local opera house 


PROMOTING MOVEMENTS 163 


to protest against “Sabbath desecration,” and since then many 
of the ministers had frequently preached on the subject, some 
of them four times a year. It was stated that they had re- 
peatedly appealed to the officials of the Steel Works in the 
interest of Sunday rest, which statement was later confirmed 
to the Committee by the General Manager of the Steel Works. 
The Ministerial Association had also appointed a committee 
with a view to conciliation, although no publicity was given 
this fact because it was felt by the Committee that “thereby 
the object of their work might be thwarted.” 

Regarding the charge that church dues were collected by 
the corporation, it was stated in the joint conference that the 
Roman Catholic priests had employed the method of church 
collection referred to, but never without the consent of the 
workingmen, and that the Steel Company had paid the money 
to the priests only on the order of the Roman Catholic mem- 
bers. A Protestant pastor, who had a congregation of two 
hundred foreigners, stated that his members had proposed the 
method to the Steel Company as an accommodation to them- 
selves and that the Company on request had consented to it, but 
he had never availed himself of the opportunity. 

The recommendations of the Committee to the public and to 
the Church cannot be given here in detail, but in general it 
was pointed out that a twelve-hour day and a seven-day week 
were alike a disgrace to civilization and that there was a way 
of avoiding them, but that they would have to be fought until 
society required backward members of the community to con- 
form to the standards recognized by decent men. It was stated 
that there should be laws requiring three shifts in all industries * 
operating twenty-four hours a day and that there should be 
laws requiring one day of rest in seven for all workingmen in 
seven-day industries, and it was pointed out that the Churches 
could well afford for the cause of human betterment to work 
for the passage of such laws. | 

It was held that the Church should inaugurate a movement to 
place in the hands of the courts, or some similar appropriate 
body, the authority to determine when industrial operations 
were necessarily continuous and must be performed on Sunday. 


164 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


As it was then, the decision was entirely in the hands of man- 
agers who were pressed for haste by purchasers, for output by 
their directors, and for profits by their stockholders. 

The Churches were urged to set aside a day at their con- 
ferences, assemblies and conventions for the discussion of 
industrial conditions and the relation of the Church to them, 
especially in line with the action of the Federal Council of 
Churches in declaring publicly against the twelve-hour day, the 
seven-day week, and for a living wage. It was recommended 
that the attention of the churches in all parts of the country 
be called to the continuous processes in such industries as iron 
and steel, paper, railroads, street railways, telephone, telegraph, 
mines, smelters, and glass, and that ministers be urged to visit 
the works of Public Service corporations of their localities 
and learn to what extent employees were obliged to work on 
seven days in the week. 

The ministers in South Bethlehem also were addressed in 
the report issued by the Committee. They were urged col- 
lectively to take a definite and pronounced stand against seven- 
day labor, so that the working people of the Bethlehems might 
know without question how they stood. In view of the state- 
ment made by the ministers that the workingmen abused their 
holidays and Sundays by drunkenness, ball-games and the like, 
it was recommended that the ministers appoint a committee to 
investigate what opportunities for clean recreation were open 
to the working people of the Bethlehems; what opportunities a 
six-day, twelve-hour man had for enjoying any outdoor amuse- 
ments except on Sunday—what opportunities the seven-day, 
twelve-hour man had at any time for enjoying himself— 
what public provision there was for adult recreation other than 
that on a commercial basis—that is, enterprises depending on 
admission tickets, in contrast with, for instance, the public 
recreation centers which served many of the low-rent districts 
of Chicago. 

Many other matters were gone into quite fully, and there is 
no doubt that as a result of the Committee’s investigation and 
report and its conference with the President of the Bethlehem 
Steel Company, who received the Committee most courteously 


PROMOTING MOVEMENTS 165 


and gave its members all the time that they asked for, for dis- 
cussion, many of the reform measures suggested by the Com- 
mittee were finally worked out until to-day the situation at the 
Bethlehem Steel Works, as well as in the steel industry as a 
whole, is decidedly improved. 

It was at the quadrennial meeting of the Federal Council of 
Churches held in December, 1908, in Philadelphia, that Dr. 
Frank Mason North, Chairman of the Social Service Commis- 
sion, presented the historic Social Creed of the Churches upon 
which the study at South Bethlehem was based. Following the 
presentation of Dr. North’s report, I was called upon to give 
an address supporting his resolutions. It was the only address 
given, and following my half hour speech the resolutions were 
unanimously adopted by the Council. The “creed’’ adopted 
was as follows: 


We deem it the duty of all Christian people to concern 
themselves directly with certain practical industrial prob- 
lems. To us it seems that the Churches must stand— 

For equal rights and complete justice for all men in all 
stations in life. 

For the right of all men to the opportunity for self-mainte- 
nance, a right ever to be wisely and strongly safeguarded 
against encroachments of every kind. 

For the right of workers to some protection against the 
hardships often resulting from the swift crisis of industrial 
change. 

For the principle of conciliation and arbitration in indus- 
trial dissensions. 

For the protection of the worker from dangerous ma- 
chinery, occupational disease, injuries and mortality. 

For the abolition of child labor. 

For such regulation of the conditions of toil for women 
as shall safeguard the physical and moral health of the 
community. 

For the suppression of the “sweating system.” 

For the gradual and reasonable reduction of the hours 
of labor to the lowest practicable point, and for that degree 


166 A. SON OF THE BOWERY 


of leisure for all which is a condition of the highest human 
life. 

For a release from employment one day in seven. 

For a living wage as a minimum in every industry, and 
for the highest wage that each industry can afford. 

For the most equitable division of the products of industry 
that can be ultimately devised. 

For suitable provision for the old age of the workers 
and for those incapacitated by injury. 

For the abatement of poverty. 

To the toilers of America and to those who by organized 
effort are seeking to lift the crushing burdens of the poor, 
and to reduce the hardships and uphold the dignity of labor, 
this Council sends the greeting of human brotherhood and 
the pledge of sympathy and of help in a cause which be- 
longs to all who follow Christ. 


XV 
GETTING OUT. OF (THE CHURCH 


For ten years I had been promoting social service work 
mainly in the industrial field for the Presbyterian Board 
of Home Missions. As it was an entirely new field and the 
methods adopted subject to many misunderstandings, it was 
natural when one considers that there were over ten thousand 
preachers, with whom I had more or less contact, that during 
this pioneering period there continued to pile up criticisms, and 
however one tried to explain them away, many remained un- 
answered, 4 

Meanwhile there had been developing several features within 
the Presbyterian Church which rapidly brought things to a 
sharp issue. First, there was the question of consolidation 
with the Southern Presbyterian Church, the United Presbyte- | 
rian Church, and the Reformed Presbyterian Church, all of 
these being very conservative in their attitude toward social 
problems. Indeed, the Southern Presbyterian Church went so 
far as to say that the Church had nothing whatever to do with 
social or political questions. It will be recalled that it was on 
this issue that there came the original cleavage in the Presby- 
terian Church in the United States at the beginning of the 
Civil War. 

The second question was that of Fundamentalism and ex- 
treme Conservatism, which, as it saw a very considerable 
part of the Church moving rapidly toward a sympathetic at- 
titude with relation to social problems, became even more 
conservative, and, indeed, intensely bitter against the newer 
situation which the Church was facing. 

Still another consideration was the growing feeling within 
the Church itself that too many special departments were being 
organized and too many so-called “experts”? employed, forget=- 


ful of the fact that the Board of Home Missions, which was 
167 


168 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


originally established to organize churches on the frontier, had 
been given charge of the entire American field—cities, country 
life, immigration, exceptional populations, and a multitude of 
other American problems which were more or less,connected 
with the Church itself and all of which had to do with the 
moral development of the people. 

The opposition of a small coterie of Conservatives living 


mainly in and about Pittsburgh became so determined and so 


bitter that the Board gradually became very timid in its at- 
titude towards the development of the newer features which 
had been inaugurated during the preceding years. The budget 
for my Department was so severely cut by a group of “financial 
experts’ that the work was greatly crippled—although at no 
time had the budget been large. Moreover, there was a feel- 
ing among some of the officials of the Board itself that “the 
tail was wagging the dog,” meaning that the various Depart- 
ments which I was heading up~—namely, Social Service, Coun- 
try Life, Immigration and Survey, were dominating the entire 
work of the Board. The truer situation was that they had 


attracted so much public attention that they were being men-— 


tioned more frequently in newspapers and in conferences than 
any other phases of the Board’s work. 


In addition to the opposition against the various Depart- 


ments, there was considerable feeling against the Labor Temple, 
most of which was entirely due to a misunderstanding of what 
was being done, but to be perfectly honest, some of those who 
actually understood the significance of our program were 
constitutionally opposed to it. 

In view of the entire situation, I felt that in justice to the 
Board—whose chief function after all was the raising of funds 
to carry on the work for which it was originally designed—it 
was best for me to resign, particularly as the General Assembly 
had appointed a Committee to reorganize the various Depart- 
ments of the Board, which included those that I had promoted 
and established. I stated specifically that if after the reorgani- 
zation had taken place the Board desired me to return, I would 
be glad to undertake the work, assuming that the work was so 
organized that I could heartily approve of the program, but as 


ti Sis 


GETTING OUT OF CHURCH 169 


the final set-up of the new work was such that I was con- 
vinced that I could not fit into what was proposed, and this 
was also equally plain to the Board itself, a complete separation 
between the Board and myself was deemed best, and in the fall 
of 1913 I left, after a decade of work with it. 

It had been decided in substance that instead of promoting 
a special social service program, an attempt would be made 
to “socialize’’ every Department of the Board’s work, which, 
it later developed, was an exceedingly vague term and meant 
substantially that the Presbyterian Church, through the only 
Board which cotld express its convictions, determined to have 
practically nothing -further to do with outstanding industrial 
problems, but rather to limit its activity to “social welfare 
work” in the local church. In other words, the comprehensive 
program in the field of industry became thoroughly emasculated 
and finally was dropped altogether. 

This change took place over ten years ago and during all 
of this period I have refrained from even discussing any phase 
of the subject of my relationship with the Presbyterian Church. 
It is gratifying to note that at the conclusion of my ten years’ 
work and after my resignation had been effected, the Board 
gave me a farewell reception at which numerous addresses were 
made expressing appreciation of what had been accomplished 
during this period. At no time had there been any unkind 
personal feeling between my superiors in the Board and my- 
self. In the main, the officials of the Board stood loyally for- 
my program, even though at times they did not understand it 
nor approve it in its entirety, as, for example, when a former - 
moderator of the General Assembly stated that I was “killing 
the goose that lays the golden egg’”’ because I protested in the 
name of the Church against the unnecessary slaughter of work- 
ingmen in the Pittsburgh rolling mills, and when I committed 
other “indiscretions” regarding somewhat similar circum- 
stances. 

An influential member of the Board declared himself un- 
alterably opposed to the work that I was carrying on, because 
he believed that the money which the Board -had been given 
should be used only for the purpose of organizing churches 


170 A. SON OF THE BOWERY 


which should later become “fountains of beneficence’’; and he 
declared that my Labor Temple,—he specifically stated that 
it belonged to me,—as well as my other enterprises, were merely 
“sink holes” into which the Board for years had been pouring 
its money. The fact was, however, that I had repeatedly offered 
to_raise personally all the money that was needed to make up 
' my entire budget if the Board would permit me to do so, but 
this request was invariably rejected because it was well known 
by the Board that many of the churches had increased their 
contributions very perceptibly because of the modernized pro- 
gram which the Board was suggesting to the churches and to 
the entire country. 

When my resignation was announced, many hundreds of 
letters came to me from friends throughout the entire country, 
asking that I reconsider my decision, but I felt very keenly 
that my usefulness in connection with this organization had 
come to,an end. I was further convinced that my activities 
‘as the representative of a particular denomination in the future 
would be futile and that the field in which I should thereafter 
_ work was one which would permit me to engage in the larger 
forms of social service for such groups as desired to use my 
experience and methods. 

The leading Presbyterian paper of the country, The Conti- 
nent, in an editorial regarding my resignation, said among 
other things: 


“The Continent has but lately expressed its opinion of 
the preéminent importance of what Mr. Stelzle has done, 
not for the Presbyterian Church alone, but for the whole 
family of evangelical denominations, within the last ten 
years. It is needless now to repeat that estimate and analysis 
in detail, but we must say again that no other one man 
within this past decade has so widely affected Protestant 
thinking as he. And few other men in America have so 
widely affected general social thinking as he... . 

‘Tt should be well understood that the Home Board has 
not been indifferent to the value of Mr. Stelzle’s services. 
The very extreme of every possible effort has been put forth 


GETTING OUT OF CHURCH 171 


by the members of the Board and by its secretaries to change 
Mr. Stelzle’s determination to retire. And the Church will 
surely expect the board to continue its efforts to retain or 
regain Mr. Stelzle, in spite of the fact of his having an- 
nounced his retirement as decisive. If Mr. Stelzle has not 
found liberties enough in his Board relations to accomplish 
all his ideals, the Board will do well to give him all liberty 
he asks, for up to this time the ideals of Charles Stelzle have 
been found to work invariably in favor of a progressive 
statesmanship which the Church has pursued to its own en- 
largement and to the extension of religion in the world.” 


To which my old friend, The Presbyterian, which had always 
relentlessly criticized almost every piece of work I had under- 
taken, replied: : 


“The ‘Continent’ expresses the conviction that the Board 
of Home Missions should pursue its efforts to retain Rev. - 
Charles Stelzle, and to overcome his decision to retire from 
the work of the Board. It gives its reasons at some length. 

“We believe this would be unwise in the extreme. The 
Church has formally required that the Department of Social 
Service should be conducted with more emphasis upon the’ 
evangelistic element, and Mr. Stelzle regards this as a 
limitation upon his plans, and therefore, for the sake of 
greater freedom to himself as well as to the Church, he re- 
signs. This is manly and wise, and is to be commended. ...- 

“Mr. Stelzle started out in the service of the Gospel, but 
his drift and development has been into and along sociology. 
His sense of restraint under the action of the Assembly, 


and his determination to become an out-and-out sociologist, _ 


rather than a preacher of the Gospel, is the logical result of 
his course, which some of his friends have long since fore- 
seen. For Mr. Stelzle to go back to the Gospel requirements 
of the Home Board of the Presbyterian Church is to reverse 
himself, and to restrain his plan and purpose. We further 
apprehend that if Mr. Stelzle continues in his present line, 
he will pass on into Socialism, where the individual becomes 


172 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


nothing, and society everything. Mr. Stelzle is doing the 
right and manly thing in withdrawing from the Home 
Board, and all honest men will commend him for this action, 
however much they may oppose his theories and plans.” 


The Christian Evangelist of St. Louis printed this state- 
ment: 


“Charles Stelzle has just completed a decade of pioneering. 
Ten years ago he was taken from the pastorate of a St. 
Louis mission and given the task of showing how the Church 
could link its activities up with social work. This work 
was an avowed success. Much of it was non-religious in 
method and many of the workers were inimical to the Church 
because it took so little interest in their sacrificing task. 
Stelzle has demonstrated that social service profits immensely 
by the use of religious sanctions, and he has also proven 
that the Church has a social function and must serve society 
as well as the individual if it is going to fulfill its redemptive 
function in the world. His work as a servant of the Presby- 
terian Home Board has done much to change the whole 
viewpoint and method of home missions from that of plant- 
ing denominational missions to that of Christianizing the 
land. Moreover, his work has been so undenominational and 
so largely has he given himself to interdenominational move- 
ments that social service seems to ring the death knell to 
sectarianism. . . . He has done more than any other man 
of the decade to demonstrate practical phases of social work 
for the Church and to cultivate an interdenominational con- 
science.” 


The Baptist Examiner said: 


“Mr. Stelzle has been greatly used in promoting friendly 
relations between laboring men and their employers, and in 
bringing laboring men to see that the Church is their friend 
and well-wisher. If we had more men like Mr. Stelzle we 
should find the larger proportion of the laboring population 
in the Church. Why should they not be in the Church? The 
Founder of Christianity was a carpenter who made his liv- 


GETTING OUT OF CHURCH 173 


ing by the sweat of his brow. Every church of our acquaint- 
ance which is worth the name is not only willing but anxious 
_ to have the laboring man in its pews. The laboring man 
must come to believe this, and it is our duty to do all in our 
power by argument, by friendliness, and by winsomeness to 
convince him of it.” } 








It was gratifying to read commendatory editorials in prac- 
tically every religious paper of prominence in the United States, 
and it was interesting that a large number of daily news- 
papers also printed editorials regarding the work accomplished 
during the ten years with the Presbyterian Board of Home 
Missions. 

Curiously enough, about a year after my resignation from 
the Board had gone into effect, the Board issued an official 
bulletin on social service, from which | quote: 


“No hand has touched the form in which this spirit (the 
social spirit) gained influence in the Church with more 
definitive influence than did that of Charles Stelzle. He has 
been partly the product of the movement and partly its in- 
spiration. He was, and is still, unique in the position he 
occupies. Having been born and reared among laboring 
people, he prepared himself for the ministry of the Church, 
and addressed himself successfully to the work of the minis- 
try, but has never lost his identification with class-conscious 
labor. There are numerous ministers in all the denomina- 
tions with similar antecedents, but none has occupied a 
position of such distinct leadership at once among class- 
conscious working people and in the Church. 

“The bent Mr. Stelzle gave to the social service propa- 
ganda was marked. He emphasized the industrial question. 
So have the social service agencies organized since among 
other denominations. This emphasis was inevitable in view 
of the seriousness of the industrial situation in America. 
In the passage of years since the first organization in the 
Church these problems have become even more acute, though 
they have changed their form in some details. The aliena- 


174 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


tion of class-conscious labor is not so complete as it once was. 
The labor press shows a closer sympathy with the aspirations 
and endeavors of the organized church. This is manifestly 
due more to the activities of Mr. Stelzle than to any other 
one cause. By persistent correspondence through a decade 
with the labor press throughout the country, he interpreted 
to laboring men the ideals of the Christian Church in terms 
which have made those ideals far more intelligible than they 
were theretofore.” 


My sympathies with the Church and my convictions regard- 
ing its opportunities have never~been slackened. Indeed, 
immediately following my resignation I began a speaking 
campaign throughout the entire country, receiving more invita- 
tions for addresses than I could possibly fill, meeting ministers, 
laymen in the churches, social workers and other groups, and 
emphasizing my conviction that never in all of its history did 
the Church have the chance which it has to-day to promote a 
far-reaching work which would give it greater influence than 
ever before. 

I was not, however, sure that the Church was availing itself 
of these opportunities, and when I attended the annual meeting 
of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, 
which was held in Columbus, Ohio, two or three years after 
I left the Presbyterian Church, I told that body that I was 
greatly disappointed because of its failure to make operative 
the splendid social service creed which had been adopted in 
Philadelphia sometime before, and which had since been ap- 
proved by several leading denominational bodies. 

No doubt I spoke with considerable feeling because I had 
hoped for such great things from the program which went 
through at Philadelphia. My friend of many years, Dr. Frank 
Mason North, who presided on this occasion and who stood 
during all the time that I spoke—for I delivered my impromptu 
address from the floor and it was not on the program—listened 
very sympathetically, and with his usual courtesy responded in 
a manner which indicated that he was largely in accord with 
what I had said. 


GETTING OUT OF CHURCH 175 


Within a few weeks the Federal Council of Churches, largely 
upon the recommendation of its Secretary, Dr. Charles S. Mac- 
farland, requested me to become the “Field Secretary for Spe- 
cial Service” with practically unlimited opportunities to put 
into operation the program which the Council had adopted 
and to which I had referred in my remarks at the Columbus 
meeting. JI have always admired the promptness and daring 
with which Dr. Macfarland and his associates took up my 
challenge, putting up to me personally the execution of what 
had not been carried out as fully as they had desired simply 
because of the lack of funds and of executive service. 

As I had been doing independent work following my resig- 
nation from the Presbyterian Board, my salary during prac- 
tically all of this time having been paid by William F. Cochran 
of Baltimore, the financial responsibility of the Federal Council, 
so far as I was personally concerned, was provided for, as Mr. 
Cochran continued to furnish the amount required to pay my 
salary. The work with the Federal Council was continued with 
much satisfaction until the United States entered the World 
War, when, shortly afterward, I resigned to take charge of 
the publicity for the American Red Cross in Washington in | 
the field of industry and the Church, having charge of both 
departments and dealing with workingmen throughout the 
country and the churches of all denominations. This work 
was continued until the Armistice was signed. 


XVI 


FIGHTING FOR A BETTER CITIZENSHIP 


VWhesoe JOHN F. HYLAN of New York and I once 
had a debate before the Board of Estimate and Appor- 
tionment, as to whether the Public Library of the city should 
have its budget cut in spite of the continual decrease in the 
book stocks of the Library. My attention had been called to 
the situation through a newspaper article, and I made a fairly 
exhaustive study of public libraries in other cities in order to 
secure the data to make a case for the New York libraries, 
although this was done entirely on my own account and merely 
as a citizen, and because I owed so much to the New York 
Public Library in the securing of my education. 

I found that a study of forty-two village libraries of New 
York State revealed the fact that during the preceding year 
there was an average per capita issue of 13.7 volumes, and a 
register of borrowers averaging over 50 per cent of the popu- 
lation of the villages. In New York City during the same 
year, the Public Library system circulated an average of only 
3.2 volumes per capita, and had only 13 per cent of the popu- 
lation it serves on its register of borrowers. 

The per capita library appropriation for New York City for 
that year was about thirty-five cents, or about one-fourth 
of the price of one book. A study made by the American 
Library Association at that time of thirty-six of the more 
important cities, representing all parts of the United States, 
indicated that the average appropriation for these thirty-six 
cities was seventy-five cents per capita, nearly twice that of 
New York City, and New York stood almost at the bottom of 
this list in point of appropriations made for library purposes. 
Because of the neglect of the forty odd branch libraries in 
the city, there were on their shelves at that time fully 150,000 
volumes which were so filthy that they should not have been 

176 


~ 







FIGHTING FOR CITIZENSHIP = 177 


used by anybody. The American Library Association believed 
that one dollar per capita of the population of the community 
served was a reasonable minimum annual revenue for the 
library desiring to maintain a good library system with trained 
librarians and at least 30 per cent of the population being reg- 
istered cardholders, as against the 13 per cent which was in- 
adequately being accommodated in New York. 

Before appearing before the Board of Estimate and Appor- 
tionment to present the case, I secured the endorsement of a 
plan to increase the budget of the Public Library by the New 
York City Federation of Churches, the New York Rotary 
Club, and the Central Trades and Labor Council of New York 
City. Thus fortified, I went to the City Hall to the meeting 
of the Board. Mayor Hylan presided. The chamber was - 
jammed by several hundred citizens, all of whom were inter- 
ested in the Public Library situation, A letter which I had 
written to the New York Times, summarizing the conditions 
at the Public Library, had been printed that morning. Obvi- 
ously, the Board was solidly opposed to increasing the budget. 
Fortunately I had secured a seat directly in front of the table 
at which Mayor Hylan sat. There was no order in the pro- 
ceeding. Any citizen, whether officially connected with the 
Library or representing an organization, no matter who he 
was, had the right to speak, provided he could catch the 
Mayor’s eye. An employee of the Library, who constituted 
practically the sole member of the Library’s staff who be- 
longed to a so-called “Librarians’ Union” affliated with the 
Central Labor Body of the city, protested most vigorously 
against an increased budget, largely because she said that 
“outsiders” were being employed in the Library—although 
her conspicuously Irish name reminded me of the Hibernian 
at an open forum meeting which I had recently attended, in 
which he said: 

“Thim Dagos is jist spilin’ this country for us Americans.” 

As her protest was being made, Mayor Hylan, by frequent 
ejaculations put words into her mouth, showing his strong 
approval of her objections. However, he was being thoroughly 
harassed by some of the speakers and, with gavel raised, was 


178 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


on the point of declaring the hearing adjourned, when I arose, 
and securing merely a glance from him, I proceeded with my 
speech. He held his gavel aloft for a few seconds and then 
slowly laid it on the table, but in a moment he took it up and 
began to pound, calling me to order on a slight pretext and 
demanding to know “what ulterior motive” brought me to this 
hearing anyway. I remarked that I represented the combined 
Protestant churches of New York City, the Rotary Club, and 
. organized labor. This, however, did not abash him in the 
least. He continued to interrupt me until, to the amusement 
of the audience, it became a question as to who could shout 
the loudest, both of us making speeches at the same time. I 
found that the only way in which I could speak at all was to 
continue my address while His Honor the Mayor was object- 
ing to what I was saying, because he was objecting all the 
time. I finished my speech. At any rate I said all that I 
cared to say on that occasion, and when I got through, the 
audience howled with laughter at the humorous situation 
which the Mayor had brought about by his discourteous treat- 
ment of me. 

“What are we going to do with the poor and the sick of 
New York?” he demanded. “We've got to take care of these 
first, and let our public libraries fare as best they can in our 
appropriations.” 

To which I replied: “Mr. Mayor, I found in my studies of 
social conditions in New York City that 80 per cent of the 
poverty here is due to sickness and that most of the sickness 
is due to ignorance. Now if you will make a larger appro- 
priation for the public libraries and give the people a better 
chance to educate themselves, they will be more intelligent 
and, therefore, less likely to be sick and as a natural conse- 
quence there will be less poverty.” | 

This apparently appealed to the crowd, but it never touched 
Mayor Hylan. 

I was city editor of the Seattle Star for a day while Dr. 
J. Wilbur Chapman and nearly a score of other evangelists: 
and singers were conducting meetings in that city. I hap- 
pened to be giving a series of addresses in Seattle at that time. 


FIGHTING FOR CITIZENSHIP 179 


The enterprising editor of the Star thought that it would be 
a good plan to have his paper produced just as a preacher 
thought a daily newspaper should be printed. The company 
of evangelists unanimously agreed that I was the man to do 
the job. For two weeks these preachers had been assaulting 
the city and were making a profound impression. There was 
a midnight parade of 15,000 men and women to the tender- 
loin district of the city, a quarter which probably had few 
equals at that time for moral depravity. The paraders 
marched to the Strand Theater and music-hall which, accord- 
ing to the local newspaper, was “one of the worst dens of 
iniquity on the Pacific Coast.” The boxes on this memorable 
occasion were occupied entirely by the girls of the community. 
Dr. Chapman gave a warmly sympathetic address at this gath- 
ering and undoubtedly the talk resulted in great good. 

Easter Monday was chosen for this editorial experiment. 
On the day before I called together the editors and the re- 
porters—although everybody Peni became a reporter for 
this special edition—and gave them each their various assign- 

ments. At first, some of the hard-boiled reporters on the paper 
thought the whole proceeding was a joke, but I had enough 
knowledge of newspaper practice to handle the situation in- 
telligently and they entered into the job with enthusiasm 
when they found that it was to be an honest-to-goodness ex- 
periment. Not one jot or tittle of the newspaper went to the 
linotype men without my approval. Everybody who came in 
to see the editor that day was sent to my office—the editor- 
in-chief’s room being given to me for the day. A woman 
came to see me during the afternoon, her face being badly 
bruised. She told me that her husband had beaten her, torn 
her wedding ring from her finger and thrown her downstairs. 
She begged me not to print ihis story because it would ruin 
her reputation and all her opportunities to make a living in 
Seattle. I agreed not to say anything about it, but I was quite 
confident, I told her, that the other papers in the city would 
do so. And this actually happened, these papers giving the 
front-page place to what was to them too good a story to 
miss. 


180 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


The make-up of the paper was much the same as it had 
been—news items boiled down, with fairly prominent head- 
lines—but the editorial page was as unlike as it well could be. 
The sworn circulation statement gave way to a Scripture text. 
While ordinarily two columns were given to editorials, five 
columns were devoted to special editorials, each one being 
signed by the man who wrote it. Most of the editorials dealt 
with human interest matters, although there was a fair pro- 
portion of material discussing current situations. Prominence 
was given to a vigorous arraignment of well-known Seattle 
men who were daily violating speed ordinances, and the names 
of a number of the richest citizens were published as “law- 
breakers” in this connection. This crusade against reckless 
driving was afterwards followed by arrests and heavy fines 
in a number of instances. Divorce cases and unsavory police 
stories were suppressed, while crimes were barely mentioned. 
It happened that on that day four particularly distressing cases 
of insanity were reported, all of which were ruthlessly blue- 
penciled on the ground that it was inhumane to parade the mis- 
fortunes of the blameless. Nothing but the cleanest of athletic 
sports escaped the censor. 

Of course, if the paper had been printed for a considerable 
length of time, the make-up of the material would have been 
different, so that it was not altogether a fair illustration of 
what the “ideal newspaper” should be like. At any rate, the 
interest in the experiment was so great that thirty thousand 
‘additional copies were printed, and this was altogether satis- 
factory to the publisher as well as to the editor. 

I was in St. Joseph, Missouri, one spring when the River 
Kaw had its annual rise, and completely cut off the city from 
communication with the rest of the country. It was impos- 
sible to get out or to come in. It was the sight of a lifetime 
to see the swollen river carry along small houses and every 
imaginable sort of thing that floated. One of the country’s 
leading orchestras, consisting of sixty musicians, played daily 
to an afternoon audience of about fifty people—the river was 
the center of attraction—but there was another feature sched- 
uled during that week. There was to be a prize fight which 





FIGHTING FOR CITIZENSHIP 181 


had been heavily advertised for some time, one of the con- 
testants later becoming known as “Battling Nelson.” Fortu- 
nately for this occasion, both prize-fighters got into the city 
before the railroad bridge gave way. I had been conducting 
meetings from night to night in various parts of town, and 
the reporter assigned to cover my meetings was the sporting 
editor of the St. Joseph Gazette. Perhaps because his brother 
was the physical director of the Young Men’s Christian As- 
sociation, it was thought that he had enough religion to write 
intelligently and sympathetically the reports regarding my 
meetings. One day he laughingly asked if I did not want to 
see the prize fight which he was to cover the next night. I 
told him that I was not interested, and then he came back 
with this: 

“How can you preach against prize fights unless you know 
what they are like?” 

I replied that I did not spend much time preaching against 
prize fights, but that it was really not necessary to experience 
all the things that one might wish to preach against. A few 
hours later he telephoned me from his office, saying that the 
city editor had agreed to print anything that I might write 
if I would go to see the prize fight. After some discussion, 
I agreed. 

The big auditorium in which the fight was held was jammed 
with men, although it was raining terrifically. My seat was 
just at the ring-side, with my reporter friend. He, of course, 
wrote the regular story of proceedings—I merely gave my im- 
pressions in the next afternoon’s paper. I declared that I be- 
lieved in a muscular Christianity—strong, virile, aggressive— 
and that I often thought men felt like kicking a religion that 
merely barks weakly at their heels. 

Here is part of the story which I wrote: 


“I have heard much of the ‘manly art of self-defense.’ 
I have tried to imagine something of the sensations of the 
men in the ring. I was curious to see, from the stand- 
point of a preacher, how a prize fight affects the crowd that 
witnesses it. In everyday life the natural impulse of the 


182 A SON OF THE BOWERY | 


human heart is to take sides with the ‘under dog.’ It does 
not seem to be so at a prize fight. At any rate, I judged 
so from the fact that when the weaker man was exhausted » 
and stood against the ropes with arms hanging and it seemed 
that the prepable victor did not care to take advantage of 
his opportunity to knock him out, the crowd yelled: ‘Follow | 
him up! Follow him up!’ The crowd seemed more blood- 
thirsty than the man in the ring. | 

‘That, to me, was one of the Pamaeet features of the whole 
athart.s sone The crowd was composed of the average ‘good’ 
eitizen. As I mingled with them after the fight, I could 
not see the so-called ‘tough’ element, which one naturally 
expects to see—because of tradition—at a prize fight. There 
were many young men; indeed, there were few others. They 
were not ‘bloods,’ as I have known them in Eastern cities. 
True, the manager and the referee were saloon keepers, but 
one might easily accuse a fellow-man of worse things than 
that, and I did not imagine that I would see the affair man- 
aged by those who ordinarily run a Sunday-school picnic. 
It should be said to their credit that they insisted on fair 
play in every detail. 

“The conversation heard as I passed out impressed me 
more deeply than anything I had ever heard from the pulpit 
as to the demoralizing effect of a prize fight. I did not see or 
hear a single thing during the fight, or after it, that would 
have a tendency to elevate a man from the grosser things 
of life; nothing to make him a better son, a stronger brother, 
a purer sweetheart, a more helpful husband; nothing that 
would send him out in this big world of ours, with its weight 
of woe and care and suffering, with the determination to 
lighten somebody else’s burdens or wipe away their tears. 

“The last picture of the fight was pitiable. The crowd 
was pushing its way out into the rain. The victor was sur- 
rounded by his friends and backers in another room, receiv- 
ing their congratulations. The men who had won their bets 
were opening bottles in a corner of the building. Already 
the janitor was turning down the lights. But the vanquished 
pugilist was still panting in his corner, a few morbid strag- 


FIGHTING FOR CITIZENSHIP 1838 


glers gaping at his open wounds. He had recovered from 
the ‘knock-out’ blow, but the blood was still streaming from 
his butchered mouth and disfigured nose. His eyes were 
rolling, helplessly, as the consciousness that he was beaten 
dawned upon him. He was being washed and coaxed into 
sensibility by two men who probably had nothing but a per- 
functory interest in their patient. I could not help feeling 
his sense of loneliness. Backers, betters, and abettors— 
gone. He had done his best but failed. The disgrace was 
his. No one remembered to offer him sympathy. But that 
is the way of the world, in these affairs, and it made one 
wish that the spirit of brotherhood might prevail always, 
even in a prize fight, if such a thing is possible.” 





When the rawness of Bolshevism first was made public, and 
it seemed that the so-called “Radicals” were gaining a foot- 
hold among workingmen in America, I was prompted to begin 
a personal campaign against this movement because I sincerely 
believed that it was doing great damage in our country. The 
method which I adopted was the printing of a series of twenty- 
four posters which contained as their major appeal cartoons 
drawn by “Ding,” the famous cartoonist of the New York 
Tribune, showing most graphically the effects of radicalism 
upon the interests of the workers. The reason I selected these 
particular drawings was because they had a wholesome hu- 
morous flavor, and were entirely devoid of bitterness or cruelty. 
At the bottom of each of these posters I printed brief epigram- 
matic, inspirational sentences which I thought would be helpful 
to the workers. My investment in this material cost something 
like three thousand dollars for the making of plates, the print- 
ing of posters and the necessary advertising in order to sell 
them to the employers. The posters went very well indeed, 
but one day I had a letter from the superintendent of a big 
mill in the St. Louis district (with whom I had long been 
having correspondence regarding social reform movements ) 
expressing keen regret that I had adopted ridicule as a method 
of answering the arguments of the Radicals, and a few days 
later a prominent-New York banker expressed much the same 


184 A. SON OF THE BOWERY 


opinion, although writing me quite at length regarding the 
futility of handling the situation in any but a straightforward 
manly fashion without “making fun of anybody.” He re- 
minded me that this method was quite unlike the way in which 
I usually proceeded to meet the objections or the arguments 
of those with whom I disagreed. These criticisms came to 
me as a jolt. I quite agreed with these friends and I imme- 
diately telephoned a waste-paper man to call the next morning, 
to whom I sold the entire output for something like sixty dol- 
lars. This experience taught me a most valuable lesson. It 
was worth the couple of thousand dollars which I lost. Humor 
and ridicule undoubtedly have their place in a well set-up argu- 
ment. They are very useful weapons for the public speaker 
or writer, but they are to be used only as part of his equip- 
ment. Huis argument must be constructive as well as destruc- 
tive, and this was the principle which I had always sought to 
live up to in controversies with my opponents. At any rate, 
it is only fair to give the opposition credit for being sincere. 

There are doubtless occasions when a terrific drive, merciless 
and unremitting, is justifiable, particularly when a bad social 
situation is to be attacked. During a week’s campaign in At- 
lanta, one of the subjects which the local committee itself de- 
sired to concentrate upon was the “Red Light District” in that 
city. Citizens of prominence owned houses in this area, and 
it was quite a favorite stunt of certain city officials to take 
visitors through this district as one of the showplaces in the 
town. A series of three-column advertisements was paid for 
by a local committee, and for many weeks this assault was 
continued, the city finally waking up to a realization of 
what was going on in its midst. Two laymen—John J. 
Eagan, a manufacturer, and Marion Jackson, a lawyer, were 
the leaders in this fight. The Chief of Police was sympathetic 
from the very beginning of the campaign, and one day he 
announced that he was going to close up the district. The 
reporters, however, believed that he was trying to “jolly” them 
and that he did not expect seriously to do anything about it— 
save one reporter who took him at his word. This reporter 
appeared in the district at the time when the Chief and his 


\ 





FIGHTING FOR CITIZENSHIP 185 


“men made their appearance, and true to his word, he closed 
every house and kept it closed, completely putting out of busi- 
ness the “Red Light District” of the city, and the reporter 
“scooped” every other paper in town by printing his story that 
afternoon. 

Curiously, however, many social workers and a good many 
ministers like to wade in the muck and mire of an unclean 
situation. I once made a study of a city of considerable size 
in the Middle West and after spending a month or so with 
my staff in making the investigations, a meeting was called 
of the preachers and “social betterment workers,” numbering 
about fifty. We were in session all the afternoon and I pre- 
sented as graphically as I could through charts and diagrams, 
as well as through speech and conference, the findings revealed 
in the survey. I told the group what I thought should be 
done constructively, not dwelling in detail upon the vices and 
immoralities of the city. I plead as earnestly as I could for a 
program which I felt could be carried out through the men 
present, but all during the discussion I could sense a feeling 
of uneasiness and restlessness and perhaps of impatience. 

When I finished my address, one of my listeners called out: 
“What about the ‘Red Light District’? and there seemed to 
come a coinciding request from the audience. 

“T don’t know much about your ‘Red Light District,” I 
replied. “Somebody else has just completed a study of this 
area for an agency in this city which has organized itself to 
deal with the situation in what I regard as a most effective 
manner and I am quite sure that if you will work with this 
group, great good will result to the entire city and mainly to 
the women who are occupants of the houses to which you 
refer.” 

But somehow there was a disappointment resulting from this 
“survey.” It was not because these men were not earnestly 
desirous of improving conditions in their city, but before I 
had been asked to make the survey, and entirely without my 
knowledge, the major subject of discussion was the conditions 
in the “Red Light District” and they wanted to know all about 
it, whereas in the program which I had set up it was scarcely 


186 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


mentioned, and then only in an incidental way in connection 
with other, and what seemed to me to be more important, prob- 
lems facing that particular town. I had made a large map of. 
the city, upon which was indicated a serious congestion situa- 
tion, the percentage of congestion being indicated by various 
colors. Imposed upon these colors were designations showing 
the homes of those who had died during the preceding year, 
and also the residences of those who had been convicted of 
crime. Other social facts were placed upon the map, all of 
which went to show that the housing conditions were largely 
responsible for the evils that existed in particular areas. But 
unfortunately, my audience was not at all interested in this 
map—they could not see it—they were so absorbed in the 
spectacular vice conditions that they had expected me vividly 
to portray to themselves and to the city as a whole. 

In another small Eastern city which is noted for its beauty 
and aristocracy, I found that in one of the wards of the town 
there was a large amount of sickness and an enormous death- 
rate because the Italian laborers who worked on the places 
owned by the aristocracy were huddled together in unsanitary 
houses and with bad surrounding conditions. : 

Naturally these high death-rates pulled down the average 
for the entire city, and when the report was made public great 
indignation was manifested against me because I had appar- 
ently misrepresented the facts concerning this “lovely suburban. 
town.” There was no denying the figures as they had been 
obtained from the Health Department, but shortly afterward, 
a well-known novelist was secured as the editor of the local 
paper in order to “undo the damage” which I had “inflicted 
upon this community.” 

Another instance in which the people in a particular com- 
munity were called upon to suffer to an unusual degree be- 
cause of the aggregation of evils in the city was in Minne- 
apolis when I was in charge of Hope Chapel—my first parish. 
Minneapolis had at that time what was known as a “Patrol 
Limits Law” which confined all the saloons of the city within 
a certain area. In making the study of this parish, to which 
I have already referred, I found that there were more saloons 


FIGHTING FOR CITIZENSHIP 187 


in the district in which my people were compelled to live than 
there were in even the worst ‘“‘slum’” sections of New York, 
Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, and St. Louis. These figures 
also aroused the feeling of many people of the city because 
they felt that Minneapolis was being unjustly compared with 
Eastern cities with respect to the saloon situation. However, 
I pointed out that because the rest of the city was relieved 
from the evils of the saloon, and that children raised in these 
sections were not being subjected to the temptations which the 
people in my community were compelled to face, therefore, 
there was a distinct responsibility resting upon Minneapolis 
as a whole to provide the very strongest kinds of uplifting 
influence for the boys and girls and the men and women living 
in the district in which they had by law compelled their saloons 
to carry on their business. As a partial result of this revela- 
tion—for it was a revelation to most of the people in Min- 
neapolis—I was offered by the Mayor of the city a large build- 
ing in the heart of the downtown district, in which to carry 
on a special work in behalf of the men who were compelled 
to congregate there as they waited for jobs, or as they halted 
in their journey through Minneapolis. These men were mainly 
lumbermen, men working in railroad camps and general migra- 
tory workers. 

Before Prohibition was enacted, there stretched clear across 
the continent in the larger cities, a chain of “rescue missions.” 
These places were crowded night after night with what ap- 
peared to be the riff-raff of the town. One of the best known 
of these enterprises was the Bowery Mission in lower New 
York City, which was famous the world over. I once lived 
on the Bowery within a block of this old mission. It was as- 
sumed by even the New Yorker that every man on the Bowery 
was either a thief or a bum. There was a day when the Bowery 
stood for everything that was corrupt and vile. The street 
was lined with dives and low-down saloons, and cheap “variety 
shows” abounded. Not far from the Bowery Mission, al- 
though not directly on the Bowery itself, was Billy McGlory’s 
well-known dance-hall and Harry Hill’s sporting house, both 
of which were known throughout the country, at least by those 





188 ‘A SON OF THE BOWERY 


who patronized such places and many others who were inter- 
ested in them for various reasons. “The way to hell” was 
inscribed in glaring letters over the entrance to various halls 
and dives. No wonder that some time ago, the retail mer- 
chants who do business on the Bowery, appeared before the 
Aldermen of New York with the request that the name of 
the street be changed, because “Bowery” appearing on their 
delivery wagons and on the wrappers of parcels was a stigma 
in the mind of the average person. But recently all this has 
been changed. ‘There is still much that is cheap and tawdry 
on the Bowery. There are also some thieves and bums. The 
theaters are far from ideal. Some of the lodging-houses are 
often over-crowded and filthy. The restaurants are frequently 
forbidding and unsanitary. But the old-time Bowery no 
longer exists. The thing that staggers most of us to-day is 
not its vice, but its poverty. 

Most solutions of the social problems of to-day are based 
upon the assumption that the average man is well-nigh ideal— 
all that he needs is a “‘system” to bring in the glad new day— 
the millennial dawn. One of the many arguments against this 
assumption is that there will always be some men who will 
fall by the wayside, beaten and discouraged, no matter what 


our economic system may be, nor how good the times may — 


be. The old Bowery Mission, which is typical of so many 
which I have seen throughout the country, has a special func- 


tion to meet the needs of those who are “down” but who are — 
not yet “out.” I have often gone down to speak to this un- | 
usual audience on the Bowery. The audience room is always | 
crowded, and the order could not be excelled. Needless to say, © 
nearly every man in the assemblage has the word “tragedy” — 


written over his face, but whatever may be true about those 
who patronize the Bowery Mission with regard to their blood 
and breed, there is no doubt that their hearts beat just like 
other men’s hearts and that in the main their needs are just 
the same. . And there is something else which must be quickly 
said—they appreciate refinement of speech and surroundings 
even though they themselves may have fallen far below the 


: 
Hy 
q 


eee ee 


a a, ed 


FIGHTING FOR CITIZENSHIP 189 


ideals of a former period in their lives. Also, they resent a 
spirit of patronage or paternalism. | 

I always found something different about the Bowery Mis- 
sion. When one thinks of the average “rescue mission,” one’s 
mind turns to a hall noisy and naked, devoid of everything that 
is esthetic and refined either in equipment or service, but this 
is not so here. It is probably true that this is the handsomest 
mission hall in the world. The walls of the main auditorium 
are dark brown stone and the mottoes on these walls—there 
must always be mottoes in missions—are done in red and gold, 
painted in fine old-English letters. The sentiment of the mot- 
toes is not cheap and flashy—they are Scripture texts full of 
deep meaning to the wandering men who are eager to hear 
the voice of authority. And the mottoes speak to them as the 
voice of God. 

Rafters and ceiling and platform and pews are churchly, 
dignified, substantial and strong, and running clear across the 
front of the auditorium is a great pipe organ, one of the big- 
gest features of the Mission. There is plenty of tiling about 
the smaller rooms—clean, white and sanitary, especially in the 
dining-rooms. Hot water and soap frequently applied make 
the rooms like “Spotless Town” parlors. Important as these 
purely physical characteristics may be—and they are exceed- 
ingly important in an enterprise part of whose task it is to 
instill in the minds of men a desire for better surroundings— 
they are the least important of the Mission’s work. 

Closely allied to the’influence of the splendid physical equip- 
ment is the esthetic influence of the music, particularly that of 
the great organ. Every night for half an hour, as the men 
take their places—although most of them come early for this 
feature, the organist plays the great classics and sometimes 
the best class of lighter music. How the men applaud as their 
favorite selections are played. Their appreciation of the best 
kind of music is encouraging, for it proves that they possess 
qualities of heart and mind which are not usually attributed 
to Bowery habitués. 

But the thing which seemed to me to grip the audience was 


190 ‘A SON OF THE BOWERY 


the simple testimony of the men who “once living in dark-~ 
ness, now see the light.” They had tried out the thing for 
themselves and found that it worked. As men told of their 
experiences in the renewal of strength, others were encouraged. 
to come with their petitions, no matter how discouraging their 
situations, and the leader would personally take all to God, 
simply, devoutly, with faith and confidence. 

Every night there were men who began the new life, but 
nobody who has not traveled the rough road could understand 
what this meant to them; it did not mean that thereafter they 
were to lie down in ‘flowery beds of ease” or to walk the 
path that was smooth and easy to travel. The leaders well 
knew that when these men left the hall it was to fight harder, 
than ever the fierce temptations by which they were sur- 
rounded, the horrible pull of the old life, until they even stood 
on the very brink of hell. And so these wise leaders kept 
close to the men who started out in the Bowery Mission to 
“begin all over again,” and to help each other a Brotherhood 
was organized so that from the moment that he took the first 
step he had surrounding him a group of men who had tray- 
eled the same road. 

For about fifty years this enterprise has stood on the 
Bowery, steering homeless, shipwrecked men into a port of 
safety. 


XVII 


FACING THE PROHIBITION QUESTION 


I NEVER had any sympathy with the statement that all 
those who drink beer and cocktails are necessarily immoral 
persons or low-browed brutes—although I never drank a glass 
of beer nor a cocktail. And I sincerely believe that those who 
are trying to abolish the Eighteenth Amendment or change 
the Volstead Act are well within their rights if they proceed 
in an orderly manner. Our American form of government 
has prescribed the method whereby any law may be changed, 
and the processes are usually through public discussion and 
the use of the ballot. These were the methods employed by 
the Prohibitionists themselves and by the same token those 
who are opposed to Prohibition, even though it has become a 
law, still have the right to try to change it. 

Unfortunately the attitude of too many men towards Pro- 
hibition is that of a game—a sport—they have a strong de- 
sire to match their wits against the official who is trying to 
compel them to do something which they don’t want to do— 
it doesn’t matter so much whether they have a desire to drink, 
any more than the hunter has a desire merely to kill—it is the 
excitement of the chase which draws them into the game. One 
of the greatest tasks of the Prohibitionist is to enlist this spirit. 
of sportsmanship so that it will be spent in putting across Pro- 
hibition as a great venture in social control which has for its 
supreme purpose the destruction of the recognized evils in the 
liquor traffic and the building up of humanity through a con- 
structive social program. 

For a good many years I had been making social and eco- 
nomic studies in various parts of the United States. In these 
investigations I invariably came face to face with the liquor 


problem in many of its forms. I discovered that it was by 
191 


192 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


no means an isolated problem. It was related to many other 
questions which needed to be considered. 

In the first place, it was not simply a moral question, as it 
had been regarded by many temperance organizations, and I 
have a conviction that the churches and certain reform or- 
ganizations have made a mistake in limiting the discussion to 
this field. There were and are many perfectly decent law- 
abiding citizens who though obeying the law are utterly op- 
posed to Prohibition and cannot understand why they should 
have been deprived of the use of liquor. It is because the 
Prohibitionists have refused to recognize this fact that just 
now it is becoming increasingly difficult to meet conditions 
which have arisen in our national life with reference to the 
Prohibition Law. 

The original promoters of Prohibition were not primarily 
economists or sociologists. Their one thought was to have 
the Prohibition Amendment passed. It was forgotten that 
the mere passing of this Amendment would not solve every 
social and economic problem which was involved in the liquor 
question. However, Prohibition was not adopted because some 
long-haired men, and the women who bobbed their hair before 
it became popular—fanatics—not wanting to drink themselves, 
did not want anybody else to drink. Prohibition was brought 
about because large numbers of the nearly two hundred 
thousand saloons and places where liquor was sold in this 
country had become a distinct menace. They disregarded the 
law. They sold to minors. They sold to inebriates. They 
sold on Sunday. They harbored crooks, blacklegs, prostitutes, 
gamblers, and every sort of disreputable people. They entered 
politics and controlled our municipal life. Attempts were 
made to reform them through high license, low license, and 
local option and model saloons, but none of these seemed to 
work out satisfactorily. 

During all of these processes the saloon-keepers and mainly 
(he brewers, who owned 75 per cent of the saloons, laughed 
at the public and ridiculed every attempt to wipe out the 
evils in connection with the business until finally the people 
became tired of the entire outfit and voted it out of existence. 


FACING PROHIBITION QUESTION 193 


lt should be noted, by the way, that it was the Anti-Saloon 
League, not the Anti-Liquor League, that was the most active 
organization in temperance reform. 

In making my studies of the liquor problem, I discovered 
that it was primarily a question with which the city had to 
do. It was not merely a question of conquering land.areas— 
as the “dry territory maps’? made by some Prohibitionists 
seemed to indicate. The “unconquered” territory was in the 
cities which did not cover much land area and which were 
indicated by small black dots on the Prohibition map. For 
example, before the Amendment was passed, only about 20 
per cent of the people in dry States lived in cities, whereas in 
the wet States 70 per cent lived in cities. One-fourth of all 
the people in the United States living in wet territory lived in 
six cities—New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Bos- 
ton, and Cleveland—and one-half of all the people living in 
licensed territory lived in four States—New York, Pennsy]l- 
vania, Illinois, and New Jersey. It was in the cities that the 
saloons were established, that most of the drinking was done, 
and that practically all of the opposition of the industrialists 
against Prohibition was found. 

We were told by the liquor interests that if Prohibition be- 
came effective, a million workingmen would lose their jobs 
and be thrown onto an already overloaded labor market; that 
workers all over the country would break out in open revolt 
and rebellion; that taxes would be so increased that working- 
men would forfeit their homes; that farmers would lose hun- 
dreds of millions of dollars annually because nobody would 
buy the grain and the fruits which the liquor men purchased ; 
that railroads which transport the raw materials used for the 
manufacture of liquor would suffer from a great reduction in 
business; that saloons and brewery property would stand idle, 
resulting in their confiscation ; that there would be an unprece- 
dented increase in the use of opium and other narcotics; that 
much sickness and many deaths would result because those 
accustomed to use liquor could not get along without it; that 
jails would be filled with prisoners because of the great in- 
crease of lawlessness. 


194 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


I determined to find out how much truth there was in these 
statements. So I organized my office staff for the purpose of 
making a nation-wide study of the liquor problem, purely 
from the economic standpoint. This research was made pos- 
sible by the generosity of my friend William F. Cochran, of 
Baltimore, whose broad social sympathies enlisted him in a 
number of sociological enterprises in which I was engaged at 
various times upon an independent basis. 

As the result of this investigation, the conviction forced 
upon me was that the liquor men were wrong in substantially 
every statement which they made regarding the effects of Pro- 
hibition, The experience of the past few years has amply 
demonstrated the fallacy of their arguments. 

The liquor men objected very seriously to my statement that 
our drink bill amounted to $2,000,000,000 annually, but it 
was rather curious that in the year-book of the United States 
Brewers’ Association in which the financial loss due to Pro- 
hibition was discussed, the editor declared that “the sums of 
money values that would disappear under the proposed scheme 
of national Prohibition would annually amount to $1,575,- 
568,650.” If over $1,500,000,000 was spent annually for 
wages, material, and other production costs in the manufac- 
ture of liquor, one could imagine that a very considerable sum 
above this amount must be added to make up for profits and 
other “incidentals.” Judging by the various items in the 
year-book of the United States Brewers’ Association which 
it was declared would be “lost” if Prohibition came in, it was 
perfectly consistent to say that it would be necessary for the 
men before the bar to spend about $4,000,000,000 in order to 
cover these amounts, instead of the $2,000,000,000 which I 
had modestly given as the annual sum spent for intoxicating 
liquor. 

But the item upon which the liquor men hoped to retain the 
support of the workingmen was their statement that 1,000,000 
workingmen would lose their jobs. Of course this statement 
was made upon the assumption that if the people of this coun- 
try no longer spent $2,000,000,000 for liquor, they could by — 
no possibility spend it for anything else. My study of the 


FACING PROHIBITION QUESTION 195 


United States Census figures indicated that if the amount of 
money spent for liquor were to be spent for food and clothing 
and furniture and other necessities of life, it would have given 
work to four times as many wage-earners, who collectively 
would receive four times as much in the form of wages, and 
would have required four times as much raw material. I 
naturally asked how the employment of more wage-earners, 
increase in wages paid, and the use of more raw materials, 
could create a labor panic. Furthermore, my study of the 
Census figures revealed that in the entire liquor industry—that 
is, in the manufacture of liquor of all kinds in the United 
States—only 62,920 wage-earners were employed, but of these, 
less than one-fourth were brewers, maltsters, distillers and rec- 
tifiers; and that more teamsters than brewers were employed 
by breweries. There were 7,000 bottlers, 15,000 laborers, and 
nearly 3,000 stationary engineers. The remainder were black- 
smiths, carpenters, coopers, electricians, machinists, painters, 
plumbers, firemen, and other mechanics, all of whom would 
easily find jobs at their own occupations in other industries, 
when Prohibition became effective. Less than 15,000 wage- 
earners would be required to readjust themselves to the 
changed situation. I discovered, also, that every year, due to 
inventions, changes of operations, and for other reasons, fully 
10,000 wage-earners were compelled to learn new trades in 
this country, and this was going on every year, whereas the 
brewers and maltsters, distillers and rectifiers, once placed in 
new trades would be fixed for all time. There would never 
be a recurrence of the unemployment problem for them. 

I made a very careful analysis of the report of the “Medico 
Actuarial Mortality Investigation” which was carried on by 
forty-three life insurance companies, covering a period of 
twenty-five years and showing their experience with over two 
million cases. This study had to do with the length of life 
of men engaged in various occupations and its sole purpose 
was to determine what premiums were to be charged for life 
insurance policies. It was incidentally revealed that the men 
engaged in the liquor business in its various forms lost an 
average of about seven years of life; the result of which was 


196 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


that no high-grade insurance company would risk a policy on 
any man engaged in the liquor business. ‘This applied par- 
ticularly to brewers, maltsters, distillers, bartenders, and wait- 
ers in places where liquor was sold. It was undoubtedly true 
that this loss of life so far as bartenders were concerned was 
not altogether due to the use of liquor but to the conditions 
under which they were compelled to work. However, the loss 
was justly attributed to the nature of the business in which 
they were engaged. 

Most of us recall the slogan used during the World War, 
“Food, Will Win the War.” During this campaign the liquor 
men flooded the Senate Committee on Agriculture with data to 
prove that they were not using as much foodstuffs as the Pro- 
hibitionists claimed, although they admitted that they used one 
per cent of the grain produced in this country. I was asked 
to appear before the Senate’s Committee to testify on the eco- 
nomic phases of Prohibition. When I was called upon, I said: 

“Let’s take the liquor men at their word. One per cent of 
the grain will feed one per cent of the people. That means 
1,000,000 people, because there are 100,000,000 of us in this 
country. We shall probably send 1,000,000 soldiers to France 
this year, that is, one per cent of our population. Hence the 
liquor men, according to their own confession, are wasting 
enough grain to feed every last man who will go to the 
trenches.” 

In a supplementary statement which I submitted to the 
Committee at the request of its chairman, Senator Gore, I 
pointed out that the United States spent every year for liquor 
$2,000,000,000—three times as much as was spent to main- 
tain all of our public schools, twice the capital in the national 
banks, one-fourth more than the total assets of the over 7,000 
building and loan associations in this country, one-tenth the 
value of all farm property including land, buildings, machinery, 
and animals, as much as it cost to operate all of our railroads, 
as much as we raised for the first Liberty Loan, twice as much 
as the value of all church property in the United States. Fur- 
thermore, the liquor bill of the country just about equaled the 
wages earned by all of the trade unionists in the United States, 


FACING PROHIBITION QUESTION 197 


and as much as the entire country spent each year for bread 
and clothing. 

One of the most distressing conditions disclosed by my 
study of the influence of the liquor business was its effect 
upon the labor movement in this country—in which I was 
especially interested. Throughout the dozen or more years 
that I was intimately associated with the labor movement in 
various ways as a student, I saw how man after man went 
down among the leaders in the labor world because of the use 
of strong drink. I was also deeply chagrined to find that the 
representatives in the ranks of organized labor from those in- 
dustries which were directly or indirectly connected with the 
liquor business, were having a sinister influence upon trade- 
unionism in this country. 

In conversation with some of the fraternal delegates to the 
American Federation of Labor from the British Trades Union 
Congress I had heard of the “Trades Union and Labor Of- 
ficials Temperance Fellowship,” whose object was “the per- 
sonal practice and promotion of total abstinence and the re- 
moval of trade-society meetings from licensed premises.” 
Union meetings in saloon buildings had been seen by Ameri- 
can labor men, also, to be particularly detrimental. _ 

At that time Arthur Henderson was president of the Fel- 
lowship as well as Chairman of the Labor Party in Parlia- 
ment. There were twenty-six vice-presidents, every one of 
whom was a member of Parliament, and every one a trade- 
unionist. In the fight for the licensing bill in Parliament, the 
enforcement of which meant the virtual destruction of the 
liquor business in Great Britain, the Labor men in Parliament 
had battled valiantly for its passage, but the bill was thrown 
out by the House of Lords. 

With this and much other information in hand, I wrote 
early in 1909 to the delegates of the American Federation of 
Labor, asking their opinion concerning the organization of a 
similar society for the labor officials in this country. Fully 
two hundred of the delegates expressed themselves as being 
in favor of such an organization, although many desired fur- 
ther information regarding it. 


198 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


Upon my own responsibility I organized a mass meeting in 
Massey Hall, in Toronto, where the next Convention of the 
American Federation of Labor was to be held. Further, I 
made arrangements for a dinner the following night, at which 
the Fellowship was to be organized. 

It early came to my knowledge, through John Mitchell, for- 
merly President of the United Mine Workers, that a caucus 
had been held of the delegates representing the liquor interests 
in the Convention, and that it had been determined to break 
up the meeting. These delegates were to take seats in the 
front of the hall for the purpose of heckling the speakers, who, 
by the way, were John Mitchell; Tom L. Lewis, who had 
succeeded Mr. Mitchell; John B. Lennon, treasurer of the 
American Federation of Labor; and James Simpson, vice- 
president of the Canadian Trades and Labor Council. I pre- 
sided. 

Massey Hall, which seats about four thousand people, was 
filled nearly half an hour before the meeting began, so that 
the liquor men were compelled to stand in the topmost gal- 
lery, and proved to be quite harmless. 

The meeting was the sensation of the Convention, because 
immediately the delegates began to take sides, and they were 
about evenly divided. Indeed, before the meeting was held, 
Samuel Gompers had asked me to call it off, because, he said, 
organized labor was then in the midst of a very critical situa- 
tion. He reminded me that a very important case, affecting 
the interests of labor, was about to be decided by the Supreme 
Court of the United States and that it was highly important 
that organized labor should stand undivided and as a unit 
under the circumstances. 

I said to Mr. Gompers that there were half-a-dozen reso- 
lutions on the desk of the Secretary sent in by various State 
and local labor bodies, asking the Federation to commit itself 
against the Prohibition Movement. I intimated that if these 
resolutions were withdrawn I would at least temporarily call 
off the formation of the Fellowship, but that the mass meet- 
ing must go on because it had been extensively advertised and 
all the arrangements had been made. He protested that this 


FACING PROHIBITION QUESTION 199 


could not be done; but at the end of two hours he telephoned 
me and said that arrangements had been made whereby the 
resolutions were to be side-tracked. When the delegates who 
had presented these resolutions arose during the following 
week and asked what had become of their petitions, Mr. 
Gompers ruled that the discussion of all political questions 
was contrary to the Constitution of the American Federation 
of Labor, and that as Prohibition was a political issue the 
resolutions were out of order. Mr. Gompers was loyal to this 
agreement until the Senate was considering the Prohibition 
Amendment when he was compelled to take action against it on 
account of the pressure of the international unions which rep- 
resented the liquor interests. 

It should be recalled that Mr. Gompers was a member of 
the Cigar-makers Union and during pre-Prohibition days the 
saloons were practically the only places in which union-made 
cigars could be purchased. ‘This naturally made it impossible 
for him to help destroy the only agencies through which the 
products of his fellow-members were sold. 

In 1924 J made an analysis of the constitutions and by-laws 
of the national and international unions affiliated with the 
American Federation of Labor with reference to the use or 
sale of liquor by their members. This study indicated that 
approximately one-half of these organizations recognized the 
evil of the use of intoxicating liquor and had taken legislative 
action regarding it—and it must be recalled that this action 
was recorded after the Prohibition Law had been in effect about 
five years, for all of the constitutions were of the year for 
which the study was made. 

There were 108 organizations involved in the study. The 
constitutions of 86 were examined—22 had not responded— 
which remainder was for the most part small and of minor 
importance. Forty-four unions had taken definite action, 42 
had taken no action. The approximate membership repre- 
sented by these various unions was as follows: 

Unions taking definite action, 2,015,800; unions taking no 
action, 727,900; unions not heard from, 117,500—the total 
approximate membership being 2,861,200. 


200 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


Sixteen of the international unions denied disability benefit 
to those injured on account of the use of intoxicating liquor, 
14 unions would not pay sick benefits, 11 unions fined those 
who appeared in their meetings in an intoxicated condition, 
II unions rejected petitions for membership if the applicant 
was known to be an habitual drinker, 9 unions would not pay 
death benefits, 9 unions reprimanded those who entered the 
meetings of the union in an intoxicated condition, 9 unions 
suspended those who entered the meetings intoxicated, 8 
unions expelled members who entered the meeting while in- 
toxicated, 2 unions denied admittance to members intoxicated, 
2 unions discharged officials if found to be habitual drinkers, 
and one union would not pay out-of-work benefit to habitual 
drinkers, another brought to trial those who were habitual 
drunkards and penalties were inflicted according to the meas- 
ure of their guilt, another compelled the withdrawal of those 
who had become owners of a saloon, or whose wives con- 
ducted saloons, one denied old-age benefit to habitual drinkers, 
another revoked benefit certificates if the member was engaged 
in the liquor trade, another recognized the right of the em- 
ployer to dismiss the member who might be proven guilty of 
drunkenness and he was also fined by this union, another ex- 
cluded from the meeting, on the request of any member, those 
who might be intoxicated, and only one union had taken action 
opposed to the Volstead Act, demanding its modification, the 
latter being the American Federation of Musicians. 

It will be seen, of course, that many of these unions had 
taken action on several of these points, and that actually those 
who had taken action consisted of more than two-thirds of 
the total membership of the American Federation of Labor. 

It has always been difficult. to determine the sentiment of 
the workingman in a particular community regarding the Pro- 
hibition question because there were so many elements involved 
that there rarely came an opportunity to express this convic- 
tion in a clear-cut unmistakable fashion. For example, the 
central labor unions in a certain city or given area were com- 
posed of representatives from the various local unions. In 
practically every case the bartenders, brewery workers and 


FACING PROHIBITION QUESTION 201 


cigar-makers, let us say, had perhaps one-tenth of the repre- 
sentation in such a body. When these particular unions pre- 
sented a resolution asking the central body to protest against 
Prohibition or local option, the resolution was ordinarily 
unanimously carried, not because the remainder of the dele- 
gates were in favor of the resolution, but because they realized 
that if at some later time they desired to have unanimous 
support of the central labor union on a question in which they 
were especially interested, they needed to vote with the dele- 
gates representing the liquor interests, because the latter always 
based their resolution upon the statement that if Prohibition 
were effected their members would lose their jobs. For this 
reason, action taken by such bodies never represented the real 
sentiment either of the delegates or of the members in their 
organizations. 

It is frequently said that if workingmen had the right to 
drink beer they would stop drinking whisky. In 1912, my 
staff made a study in New York City of how workingmen 
spent their spare time and their spare cash. Over 1,000 work- 
ingmen were interviewed, and each filled out a blank which 
contained over 100 questions which gave very minute infor- 
mation concerning their attitude toward recreational problems. 
These workingmen were engaged in 164 different trades and 
occupations, and there were 29 different nationalities repre- 
sented. They were almost equally divided between Catholics, 
Jews, and Protestants. The number of hours they worked 
and the wages which they earned were recorded. It was re- 
vealed in this study that about 55 per cent of the men drank 
liquor of various kinds, 53 per cent drank beer, and 21 per 
cent drank whisky. That is, of those who drank intoxicants, 
38 per cent drank whisky. This proves that the fact that 
workingmen could drink beer did not necessarily keep them 
from drinking whisky. 

I found that the liquor men made more of the “personal 
liberty’ argument than any other. When I discovered that 
I would have to meet that point in arguing with some of the 
leading lawyers of the country who took the side of the liquor 
men, I spent a good part of the summer studying Chase’s 


202 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


“Blackstone’—that heavy volume on fundamental questions 
of law. Adding some very human, every-day applications of 
those principles, it was an easy matter to meet the learned 
gentlemen in the case that they were trying to make out. 

The liquor men never failed to express their sympathy for 
workingmen in discussing the loss of their own business. 
They argued that the laborers wanted wine and beer, and to 
prove it they presented data which could not be authenticated. 
One of the most conspicuous instances was at the time when 
the Senate was discussing the passage of the Eighteenth 
Amendment. Placed by a committee composed of unionists 
representing trades more or less allied with the liquor indus- 
try, a full-page advertisement appeared in Washington news- 
papers declaring that 2,082,637 union workingmen petitioned 
the President and Congress against cutting off their supply 
of beer. This advertisement was a fake, and here are the 
facts: 

First, according to the report of the Secretary of the Ameri- 
can Federation of Labor at the time the petition was prepared, 
there were 10,000 fewer members in the Federation than there 
were alleged signers to the petition. Only twenty-two out of 
the forty-eight States were mentioned in the petition, and yet 
the number of alleged signers from the twenty-two States 
was greater than the total membership of the American Fed- 
eration of Labor in all the States. 

Second, only 445 local labor bodies out of 22,000 were 
listed as having signed the petition. 

Third, the petition was not signed by individual working- 
men. In most cases the officials of international unions pre- 
sumed to speak for their entire membership, when actually a 
very large percentage of their members were in favor of 
Prohibition. 

Fourth, many trade-unionists were counted again and again 
in their international organizations, in their State labor bodies, 
in their central labor unions, in their local unions, and in such 
organizations as personal liberty leagues, mutual benefit so- 
cieties, etc. 


FACING PROHIBITION QUESTION 203 


As soon as this advertisement appeared in the Washington 
papers, I was informed by long-distance telephone in New 
York of its contents, and immediately I made arrangements 
with one of the Washington papers to print a two-page ad- 
vertisement in which every statement made by the liquor men 
was challenged and their figures were refuted. That was the 
end of that committee’s discredited attempt to speak in behalf 
of organized workingmen. 

In December of 1925, at the invitation of the Federal 
Council of the Churches of Christ in America, I went to 
Detroit to address the annual meeting of its Executive Com- 
mittee on the subject—‘‘What Plans Should the Federal Coun- 
cil Make for Future Work for Temperance and Prohibition?” 
This meeting had all the force and practically all the personnel 
of the Quadrennial Meetings of the Federal Council, and was 
therefore of considerable importance. ‘There were present at 
the meeting the leading national representatives of the Anti- 
Saloon League and other temperance organizations. In pre- 
senting the subject I reminded the members of the Committee 
that Prohibition cannot be forced upon the Nation—that the 
people will accept it only because it believes in the soundness 
of its philosophy and in the social value of its observance; 
Prohibition will produce its best results only when the people 
of our country accept it sincerely, warm-heartedly, and enthu- 
siastically. 

Quoting from this address: “When the saloon was removed 
no substitute was provided, nor has the slightest interest been 
exhibited by Prohibitionists in the workingmen’s social situa- 
tion to-day with respect to those matters in which the saloon 
fulfilled an important function, bad as it was on the whole. 
This is one of the reasons why workingmen have become so 
bitter against Prohibitionists. The apparent silence of work- 
ingmen regarding the situation is due to the fact that they 
cannot adequately give expression to their feelings. If the 
Prohibitionists of America would help work out a construc- 
tive program for the workingmen’s social welfare instead of 
being always negative in their attitude, always closing the 


204 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


workingmen’s resorts, and never helping to open wholesome 
centers—these workers would be more easily won to the side 
of the Prohibitionists.”’ | 

It is unfortunate that many Prohibition reformers have 
assumed an arrogant attitude toward this entire situation. 
They have insisted with irritating finality that because the 
Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution was passed in a 
perfectly legal way that the question is forever closed. “‘It 
is not sufficient merely to insist upon obedience to the Law,” 
I said. ‘There should be more of an inclination on the part 
of the Prohibitionists to rest the claim for observance of the 
Volstead Act upon its merits as a social measure. It is a fal- 
lacy to assume that the acknowledgment that certain of one’s 
opponent’s arguments are true and that he has made something 
of a case necessarily degrades one’s position or dishonors the 
cause which one represents. It is claimed by many Prohibi- 
tionists that they are engaged in a war, that only war tactics 
should be employed, and that it is fatal to admit error in any 
particular. There never yet was a discussion in which one 
side was 100 per cent right and the other 100 per cent wrong.” 

The following program was submitted, looking toward the 
destruction of the traffic in and use of alcoholic and intoxicat- 
ing liquor in a self-determining nation through the agencies 
of civil government and educational processes: 


1. To suppress the manufacture and transportation and 
importation of intoxicating liquor for bevetage purposes. 

2. To destroy the system of graft which has crept into 
the ranks of the enforcement officers of the Federal Gov- 
ernment. 

3. To inspire local communities to help to enforce the 
Prohibition Law. 

4. To destroy the saloons which are still unlawfully oper- 
ating in many of our American cities. 

5. To demonstrate why the old liquor régime with all of 
its attendant evils must not be returned in this country. 

6. To bring the public up to the standards already enacted 
into law by a majority vote of the legislative bodies of this 


FACING PROHIBITION QUESTION 205 


country, namely, the Eighteenth Amendment to the Con- 
stitution. 

7. To educate the public, both those who believe in Pro- 
hibition, and those who are opposed to it, regarding the far- 
reaching influence of the bootlegging industry upon the 
entire life of the Nation, undermining as it does Constitu- 
tional authority and the personal safety and security of 
property of all of our citizens. 

8. To study and honestly recognize the actual situation 
regarding Prohibition as it exists to-day, securing data 
from impartial sources, in order that the public may have 
the benefit of all the facts. 

g. To educate the public as a whole regarding the effects 
of the use of liquor, bringing to bear upon this subject sub- 
stantially the same arguments which were originally em- 
ployed in securing the passage of the Eighteenth Amend- 
ment.” 


I had felt very keenly that what was needed was to go back 
to the elementary methods of educating people to-day regard- 
ing the harmfulness of the use of liquor and the corruption 
which has always existed in the liquor business. 

Three days after giving this address at Detroit, I debated 
in open forum at Montclair, New Jersey, with Captain Wil- 
liam H. Stayton, the founder and president of the ‘‘Associa- 
tion Against the Eighteenth Amendment,” the question, “Shall 
the Eighteenth Amendment Be Abolished?” Captain Stayton 
was advertised as “the greatest authority on Prohibition in 
the world’—at least this was the statement printed in a per- 
sonal folder which was used for advertising purposes. I had 
never met Captain Stayton, and while waiting for the debate 
to begin, a mutual friend informed me of his remarkable per- 
sonality and achievements. As I had not debated the liquor 
question since the Eighteenth Amendment was adopted some- 
thing like six years before, I was frankly nervous as to the 
outcome of the debate. But after listening for ten minutes 
to the Captain’s discussion, I leaned back in my chair on the 
platform quite at ease, for I soon realized that the arguments 


206 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


that were being presented were “old stuff,” namely, “Putting. 
Prohibition over on the boys who went to France,” and “Per- 
sonal Liberty.” 

In making the arrangements for this debate I was offered 
my regular fee for a lecture. The same offer was made to 
Captain Stayton—but I happened to see the letter in which 
he declined to accept a fee, saying that he was engaged in this 
work as a loyal citizen of the United States and because of his 
deep personal interest in the question. Feeling that I would 
be at a decided disadvantage if the audience were informed 
that Captain Stayton was debating at his own expense and that 
I was discussing the question as a “professional Prohibitionist,”’ 
I suggested to the chairman in charge of the arrangements 
that my own fee be canceled. He, however, intimated that if 
Captain Stayton did not declare his “disinterestedness” from 
the financial standpoint my fee would still be paid, but I 
remonstrated and said, ‘‘The fee is off.” 

It transpired that my opponent told the audience precisely 
what he had said in his letter and I had the satisfaction of 
making the same declaration—it was worth doing even though 
it cost me at the rate of about a dollar a word. The fact is 
that while I had frequently spoken on the Prohibition ques- 
tion, so far as I can recall I have never directly received one 
dollar from any Prohibition organization or any Prohibition 
movement for any address that I have ever made—although 
it would scarcely be necessary to apologize had I done so. 

The result of this debate gave me such renewed confidence 
in the force of my case that I paid for a half-page advertise- 
ment in one of the leading weekly magazines in this country 
challenging any man in America to debate the Prohibition 
question in any town in the United States. 

Upon one occasion I was challenged by a lawyer of promi- 
nence in New York City to debate the question, “What Will 
Happen to the Workingman as a Result of Prohibition?’ I 
had been warned by the Anti-Saloon League leaders that this 
particular gentleman would spend most of his time abusing 
and belittling me before the audience. I spoke first, and, 
without even referring to my opponent or to the Association 


FACING PROHIBITION QUESTION 207 


which he represented, I immediately plunged into the facts 
and for forty minutes gave the audience some of the results 
of my study of the economic aspects of the liquor problem. 

When it came his time to speak, he turned to me and said: 

“You are too much of a gentleman to be in this business. 
You have not abused the liquor men nor the saloon-keepers, 
and this sort of procedure is altogether too uncommon among 
your friends.” 

He spoke in this strain for some minutes, and then, instead 
of using his forty minutes in the defense of the subject, he 
told the audience a few funny stories and made some general 
comments, and sat down, nor did he use the ten minutes to 
which he was entitled for a rebuttal. Two facts were brought 
home to me again on this occasion. First, that it never pays 
to abuse your opponent either in a public or private discus- 
sion; and second, that the liquor men had not a leg to stand 
on when it came to a presentation of the economic phases of 
the liquor business. 

In the early part of 1926, hearings on the National Pro- 
hibition Law were held before the Subcommittee of the Com- 
mittee on the Judiciary of the United States Senate in Wash- 
ington. I was asked to appear before this Committee. 

There had previously appeared before the Committee several 
representatives of the American Federation of Labor who de- 
clared that organized labor as a whole was opposed to the 
Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act. I called atten- 
tion to three different reports submitted to the Annual Con- 
ventions of the Federation by Mr. Gompers in which he 
pointed out the evils of the saloon and the constant desire 
among the membership of labor unions to hold their meetings 
in halls on the premises of which there was no sale of in- 
toxicants. 

“Organized labor believes in better jobs for workingmen, 
in greater efficiency, in higher wages, in keeping little chil- 
dren in school instead of sending them to factories,” I told 
the Committee. “It believes in the dignity and elevation of 
womanhood and in the preservation of the home. The direct 
effect of the use of liquor and the influence of the liquor busi- 


208 A SON OF THK BOWERY 


ness as a whole is against every one of these standards. There- 
fore, organized labor cannot logically take a position in favor 
of the increased manufacture and consumption of that which 
lowers the standards for which organized labor is contending.”’ 

I called attention to the fact that organized labor had been 
building labor temples throughout the United States for many 
years and that in scarcely any instance was the sale of liquor 
permitted in these buildings owned by trade-unionists. 

Reading from a personal letter sent me by President Theo- 
dore Roosevelt in 1915—that is, just before the Eighteenth 
Amendment was adopted—I quoted these words: 

“There are few things more important to our social ad- 
vancement than the loosening of the grip of the liquor inter- 
ests upon the labor movement.” 

Referring to the growth of the temperance movement among 
English labor leaders, I said, “Mr. Gompers once remarked 
to me that the sentiment in the British Trades Union Congress 
in favor of Prohibition had become so strong that they would 
not elect a fraternal delegate to the American Federation of 
Labor unless he were a total abstainer. It is rather interesting 
in this connection to note that Great Britain in the early part 
of 1926 sent a commission of industrial experts to the United 
States to find out why its workingmen under Prohibition ex- 
celled in production over against the beer- and wine-drinking 
workmen of Europe.” 

This is the barest outline of my remarks to the Senate’s 
Committee. There was much additional material and results 
of studies. Practically every witness that had appeared for 
the “Drys” had been heckled by the representatives of the 
“Wets,’’ but when I concluded my testimony, the counsel for 
the “Wet” forces remarked: 

“Mr. Chairman, considering the number of claims that this 
witness has made—they are so enormous—it would be utterly 
impossible to cross-examine him adequately within any rea- 
sonable length of time. I think he should be asked to furnish 
a copy of his statement for us, because of the very serious 
charges that are made here . . . that we may show it to the 
representatives of the American Federation of Labor.” 


1 


| 
. 


FACING PROHIBITION QUESTION 209 


It was understood that I was to be called later, but I never 
again heard from the counselor for the “Wets,’ nor from 
the witnesses of the American Federation of Labor. 

In a brief-case at my side I had documentary evidence to 
prove every statement made to the Committee, and it would 
have been mighty interesting to have done so. However, the 
complete report of my address was furnished to the Committee 
and to the American Federation of Labor officials. 


XVIII 


DOING THE WORK OF AN EVANGELIST 


FR OR centuries the poets and philosophers have been telling 
us that women are more “spiritual-minded” than men. 
Just the other day a professor of psychology said that “the 
reason women are more spiritual-minded than men is because 
men are more robust, more virile, than women.” ‘The poets 
and philosophers are altogether wrong, and the professor of 
psychology is half wrong. He is only correct when he says 
that women are not so robust nor virile as men—although 
there are many who would even dispute the latter statement— 
they would simply admit that men are stronger physically, 
that’s all. 

Preachers’ conferences and ministers’ meetings had for 
many years as one of their favorite topics the question of why 
men did not go to church. They wrote articles about it and 
were perfectly sincere in their convictions that men did not 
go to church because they were greater sinners than women— 
that they were not so emotional as women, that religion made 
less of an appeal to men than to woman. And they were all 
wrong. 

I was never a professional evangelist—in the sense that I 
went from city to city conducting evangelistic campaigns— 
but I had an extensive experience throughout the entire coun- 
try in speaking at evangelistic meetings. As a result of this 
experience I am prepared to say that men respond more 
readily to the religious appeal than women do, and, strange 
as it may seem, it is easier to bring tears to the eyes of an 
audience of men than it is to make women cry—I am frank 
to say that I never tried to make people cry, but when there 
seemed to be occasion for it, it was usually the men and not 
the women who shed the tears. I consulted with scores of 


evangelists of prominence and other speakers, and their testi- 
210 


DOING WORK OF AN EVANGELIST 211 


mony was invariably that men were easier to reach with a 
religious appeal than were the women. 

Possibly the reason that the public generally imagined that 
women respond more quickly than men to religion is because 
there were twice as many women in the churches as there were 
men—sometimes three or four times as many. The fact is, 
women attended church largely because the Church gave them 
practically the only outlet for the expression of their social 
instincts. Actually, most of the activities of women in the 
churches had to do with Ladies’ Aid Societies, with sociables, 
with missionary organizations and other enterprises which 
were distinctly social in character. The men, however, had 
other opportunities for social expression through their lodges, 
their clubs, their labor unions and other organizations. 

Lately this has been changing—women are now interested 
in politics because they have the right to vote, they have be- 
come engaged in social and civic movements, they have enor- 
mous women’s clubs, they have entered practically every field 
in which men were formerly found almost exclusively. Less 
and less are they being attracted by the Ladies’ Aid Society 
and the missionary organization, and they refuse any longer 
to stand around with their trays and their towels at a supper 
given to the men in the community who have been inveigled 
into attending this function of the Church—smiling good- 
naturedly at the guests of the evening, or looking shy and em- 
barrassed when the funny man of the crowd offers the usual 
vote of thanks: “To the ladies—what would we do without 
them,” or some similar toast. The women have found different 
jobs and the question that is going to bother the Church some 
day will not be “why do so few men attend Church,” but “why 
have the women ceased attending its services.” 

But to discuss more specifically the purely spiritual aspects 
of the case, why would God penalize a man in the development 
of his spirituality merely because he is robust and virile? We 
need not discuss the question as to whether women are better 
than men—they undoubtedly are more gentle, more tender, and 
their religion may be sweeter—but I have a strong conviction 
that the emotion and the spirituality of men is as deep as that 


212 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


of women. It is largely because the Church and so-called 

“spiritual leaders” have failed to recognize this fact that men 
have not been attracted to the Church. It is rather curious 
that large numbers of men have been “converted” at evangelis- 
tic meetings, but this has been true because the best evangelists 
in the Church to-day are preaching a virile, manly gospel. 

Another fallacy—which has been generally accepted, how- 
ever—is that workingmen are harder to “reach” than are other 
kinds of men, but I found that men in the shops or wher- 
ever else they may have congregated, responded much more 
quickly to religion than did men in any other walk of life. 
They may not always have been attracted by the Church or by 
churchly things, but in matters of pure religion or understand- 
ing and in the acceptance of religious truth they were much 
more responsive. 

When I was in the city of Brussels I visited the Peoples’ 
Palace—a wonderful building costing something like three mil- 
lion francs—with which about twenty thousand workingmen 
were identified. Arriving at the Palace very early in the eve- 
ning, my guide took me from room to room in which activities 
of many kinds were being carried on, until we finally reached 
an auditorium about forty feet wide and sixty feet deep, at 
the rear end of which a narrow platform had been erected. 
Above this platform there hung a great red curtain. Placing 
me directly in the center of the room, my guide went to one 
side of the platform and, watching me out of the corner of his 
eye, pulled a cord. The curtain parted in the middle and hung 
gracefully on either side, and there I saw frescoed against the 
wall, a wonderful painting of Jesus, with hand uplifted. 

_I turned to my guide in amazement. We had been talking 
about social conditions, educational facilities and the various 
functions being carried on in that building, but not a word of 
religion, because I thought that neither he nor the men who 
attended in such large numbers were interested in the subject. 

“Why do you have this picture of Jesus here?” I finally 
asked him. “Are many of your men church members?” 

“No,” he replied, “I don’t know that any of the thousands 
of men who come here go to any church.” 


DOING WORK OF AN EVANGELIST 213 


Still more mystified, I said to him, “Then why do you give 
such prominence to this picture of Jesus?” 

“Because,” he replied, “we believe that Jesus was the first 
great friend of the workingman, and we honor and revere him 
for it.” 

Going to London shortly afterward, I went out to Hyde 
Park one Sunday afternoon and saw a great crowd of about. 
five thousand workingmen who were being addressed by one 
of their radical speakers. I noticed that whenever he referred 
to the Church, the audience responded with strong hisses, but 
in the course of his address he mentioned the name of Jesus. 
Instantly a man sprang to the platform and shouted: 

“Mr. Chairman, I would offer a resolution that we give 
three cheers for Jesus Christ.” 

The chairman put the motion to the crowd and there came 
three tremendous cheers from that big gathering. 

There may be a question of the orthodoxy of these working- 
men regarding the person of Jesus, and it is quite true that in 
the minds of many workingmen Jesus was merely a great 
social leader—one who was interested in the economic affairs 
of the people—but actually the average workingman is about 
as orthodox in his conception of Jesus as is the average 
preacher. There is no doubt that if the Church could ade- 
quately present its message of religion, of spirituality, in the 
terms of a strong manhood, it would attract a very considerable 
number of men, both workingmen and others, who are now 
alienated and who are not in the least interested in essays and 
doubts which so many ministers preach. They are interested 
in a positive gospel which carries with it an obligation to as- 
sume responsibilities and duties. 

As I have just said, my experience as an evangelist has been 
limited to the routine work of my churches or to my individual 
addresses given to audiences in various parts of the country,— 
although I have arranged extensive evangelistic campaigns. 

Once I spent a week in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Several of 
the churches in that city had conducted evangelistic meetings 
during the previous winter and apparently they had not turned 
out very satisfactorily. They certainly had not welded together 


214 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


the Christian sentiment of the town, nor had they brought to- 
gether the ministers of the city. So it was decided to have a 
“union” meeting of the churches. But when it came to select- 
ing the evangelist, there was trouble because among the minis- 
ters there was a great diversity of opinion on practically every 
theological and sociological question that entered into the life 
of the city. 

Finally, the minister of the leading church, who in the nature 
of things would have been compelled to pay the greater part of 
the expense, said to his fellow-ministers: 

“Tf you can bring Stelzle to Green Bay I will stand for him 
and support him. He is the kind of evangelist that I would 
like to have here for a week.”’ 

It was said that this particular minister was a Unitarian in 
his theological convictions and, therefore, probably none of the 
professional evangelists in any of the so-called “orthodox” 
churches would have been acceptable to him. The other minis- 
ters in the city, having known of my evangelistic work as a 
pastor in St. Louis, promptly accepted the challenge, and I 
was invited to come to Green Bay to conduct a week’s meetings. 

During eight days, twenty-two addresses were given at shops, 
halls, club-rooms, with audiences that jammed the auditoriums 
—grimy, oil-stained workingmen, keen, assured business men, 
earnest, eager preachers, well-groomed club women and 
workers of all classes and creeds responded with a deep desire 
for a larger service in the name of religion. The interest and 
attendance grew daily in spite of severe Wisconsin snow- 
storms, beginning on the first Sunday with a mass meeting of 
men in the largest hall in town and a mixed audience at night 
with hundreds turned away for lack of room, and culminating 
in similar meetings for men and women at the same place on 
the last Sunday. The first three nights were devoted to a 
discussion of social problems, and during the remainder of the 
week a strong evangelistic appeal was presented. Meanwhile 
I had been making a study of the needs of the city from the 
standpoint of possible service for those who desired to do more 
work in the community. I found about nine different phases 
of work which might attract men and women, and had these 


DOING WORK OF AN EVANGELIST 215 


listed on one side of a small card. On the other side of the 
card there was printed a general acceptance of Jesus himself 
and a determination to follow his precepts and to help build up 
his kingdom, each person designating on the card the particular 
kind of work in which he was interested and to which he would 
give personal service or contribute money. The cards were 
presented on the last Sunday afternoon and evening, and over 
nine hundred were signed. The cards were impartially signed 
by every sect in the city, and even the Jews signed cards at least 
promising service of some kind in the community. I recall that 
the owner of the motion-picture show in town, a Jew, was one 
of those who promised to help make the town a better place in 
which to live. 

This series of meetings proved to be so successful and of 
such immense practical value that I determined to repeat the 
effort in as many cities as possible during the following year, 
but circumstances prevented my doing so then and since, al- 
though a somewhat similar series was conducted in Ironton, 
Ohio, last year. I have a conviction that the right kind of an 
evangelist, who has a message which is broad and deep and 
thoroughly evangelistic, but with a social spirit backed by 
knowledge of social conditions and principles, could win his 
Way in every community in this country. He would need to 
be frank in his criticism of workingmen, of employers, of 
churches, of civic conditions, giving credit where credit was 
due and pointing the way to higher and better things with no 
visionary programs but with practical plans for utilizing the 
agencies in existence. Such an evangelist would win the ad- 
miration and respect of every class and creed and he would 
exalt Jesus and his Church throughout the community and do 
a large service for the people. 

For the most part the day of the professional evangelist is 
past. Those who once conducted great tabernacle meetings 
have covered the country so completely, and since return visits 
are rarely sought, it is evident that they have about finished 
their kind of appeal. It is not broad enough to meet the 
modern situation. It is quite true that men still need to be 
reminded of their sins and healed of their iniquities, but the 


216 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


methods of many of the professional evangelists are such that 
they cause even greater criticism of the Church by outsiders 
on account of the impossible situation which their meetings 
develop in the community. They usually indulge in the rawest 
kind of censoriousness regarding the local ministers and others 
who have been patiently working away for years, really prepar- 
ing the ground for the coming of the evangelists. And their 
messages are so obviously limited in their appeal to the larger 
life. Getting away from the excitement and the atmosphere 
of the tent or the tabernacle, men either become more indiffer- 
ent than ever, or else they remain in the Church and make the 
life of the minister so unhappy that it often follows that prac- 
tically every preacher in town wants to resign, or does resign 
if he can possibly find another church somewhere else that will 
take him, 

This should not be so, but the evangelists who are rapidly 
finding themselves without calls, many of them almost stranded, 
have themselves largely to blame for this condition. The result 
has been that with the passing of the evangelist, local minis- 
ters are themselves doing their own evangelistic work, with the 
possible assistance of a singer or one who knows how to or- 
ganize the details of meetings. Usually he will call for a fellow 
pastor to help him—a man who is sympathetic toward his 
fellow minister and who knows what he will have to face after 
the meetings are over. 

It should be said, however, that the evangelists of this 
country are not wholly to blame for their short-comings in 
this regard. Whoever gave them their training for the special 
work to which they are called, failed to give them the broader 
outlook which is so necessary in dealing with community prob- 
lems, for after all the evangelist either builds up a community 
as a whole, or he breaks down the community life. He either 
leaves the people happier and makes life more wholesome, or 
else he leaves bitterness and narrowness in his wake. It is a 
social job, this job of the evangelist—it is a bigger thing than 
merely urging “individuals to accept Christ.” He must be 
interested in raising the manner of living for the entire city. 
He should have more of the spirit of the old prophet who dealt 


DOING WORK OF AN EVANGELIST 217 


with the affairs of the nation and who preached about them 
intelligently and inspiredly. 

But this cannot be done through a cheap ridicule of every- 
thing with which he does not agree. The evangelist has a dis- 
tinct advantage while he occupies the platform, because few 
people would have the audacity to discuss openly with him 
any question before his own public. 

There are many evangelists for whom I have the greatest 
respect, both because of their sincerity and their effectiveness 
as workers, but the one who stands out as the leader of them 
all is Dr. William E. Biederwolf, who is admitted by the evan- 
gelists themselves to be their finest representative. He has 
for many years been president of the various evangelistic or- 
ganizations created by those interested in such work. He is the 
head of the Winona Lake Bible Conference and other similar 
institutions. Dr. Biederwolf won the scholarship at Princeton 
which gave him two years’ study of Greek in Europe. Usually, 
when he reads the New Testament lesson at his meetings, he 
reads directly from his Greek Testament, and translates as he 
proceeds. 

When I was in charge of the evangelistic meetings in St. 
Louis during the World’s Fair in that city, Biederwolf was one 
of our most popular speakers. I recall that I had a big streamer 
prepared advertising him, which stated: “J. Wilbur Chapman 
says: ‘there is no better evangelist.’”” And Chapman was at 
that time king of the evangelists in America. 

But the thing I liked best about “Bieder” was his wholesome 
human characteristics. He was generous beyond belief in his 
dealings with his associates. His principal diversion was to 
buy up pearls and other precious stones, and he always carried 
dozens of them in his pockets, with which he played like an 
enthusiastic youngster plays with marbles or trinkets. In his 
letters to me he always referred to a new stone which he had 
picked up somewhere, and in his sermons he most skillfully 
used them as illustrations. Anybody who knew Biederwolf 
for any length of time was sure to be wearing one of his stones 
in a ring or a scarf-pin. 

During the Men and Religion campaign Biederwolf was the 


218 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


evangelist in my team and had charge of that department. The 
strain on the men in the team was terrific, because for nearly 
a year they spoke daily from three to six times, often under 
the most trying circumstances. We early made it a rule to 
meet together at the close of our night meetings for a supper in 
a private room in our hotel, when we simply “let go.” There 
was the utmost hilarity, and for an hour we forgot that we 
were evangelists, boys’ workers, missionary leaders, shop- 
preachers, social service workers, or Bible teachers, and told 
stories, engaged in gymnastic stunts, or general tomfoolery. 
Biederwolf was always the leader at these nightly festivities. 
He was a natural athlete and often he tossed me close to the 
ceiling, sometimes to my own alarm. 

Of course, we always began the day with a prayer service, 
immediately after breakfast, which we always had together, so 
that we were spiritually prepared for the work of the day, but 
nobody knows the fearful strain upon those who are exclusively 
engaged in strenuous religious work, unless they themselves 
have tried it. And few realize how close to the snapping point 
men often arrive who are giving heart and soul and body to 
the spiritual development of others. Few are so tempted as 
those who live in a high spiritual atmosphere. It will be re- 
called that it was when Jesus was “full of the Holy Ghost’ that 
he was led into the wilderness, ‘“‘being forty days tempted of 
the devil.” 

I remember that on several occasions when our team mem- 
bers were in a high state of spiritual fervor, Biederwolf, who 
was the “spiritual psychologist” as well as the great humanist, 
broke the tension by telling a terrifically funny story. 

When I went to St. Louis to begin my pastorate of what is 
now the Markham Memorial Church, I suggested to the mem- 
bers of the Christian Endeavor Society that we have some 
open-air meetings on the City Market lot, which was only two 
blocks from the church—but the young people smiled and 
shook their heads. 

“That’s all right for the Salvation Army, but not for 
Presbyterians,” said one, who was spokesman for all, and_ 


| 





DOING WORK OF AN EVANGELIST 219 


preaching, I was very patient and urged the importance of what 

I was suggesting and the great opportunity which might come 
to them and the good which they might do to many people who 
would not attend any church. Finally, sixteen of the young 
people volunteered to meet me the next evening to begin the 
open-air campaign. 

We started from the church, a drum corps BW ee chit the 
procession, then came a boy bearing a transparency which in- 
vited the people to the after meeting that was to be held in 
the church building. The transparency was followed by the 
sixteen workers, marching in the middle of the street. The 
neighbors smiled at the odd proceeding, no doubt wondering 
what it was all about. Before we reached the market lot, a 
large company was following and the sound of the drums and 
singing attracted the men in the saloons and the people near by. 

Reaching the lot, I jumped to the top of an apple barrel that 
had been furnished as a platform and gave a brief address. 
We then returned to the church, following the same procedure 
with the drum corps and the transparency, with the result that 
the church was packed to the doors. These meetings were con- 
tinued nightly until late in November, when I suggested that 
we had better give them up and take up the “regular work of 
the Church.” I have oftert smiled as I thought of that ex- 
pression, as though this were not the thing that the Church 
should be doing regularly. The young people protested—the 
same young people who at first were so much afraid of the 
plan. Their number had increased by this time to over fifty, 
and they worked most industriously every night, not only at 
the church, but at the open-air meeting itself, passing out 
special pieces of literature and giving courteous and kindly 
invitations to have the people come to the church service. 

_ I recall that one of my hearers at one of these meetings, 
who had been reading about it in local newspapers—a man of 
considerable wealth, living in another part of the city—said 
to me after the service that he was about to take a trip around 
the world and that he was so impressed with the value of this 
sort of thing that he planned to take with him one hundred 
hymn-books, so that whenever he got an opportunity he would 


220 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


at least have an open-air song service. My own experience 
with open-air meetings had been so profitable and so satisfac- 
tory that I advocated this method in every part of the United 
States and frequently conducted demonstration meetings to 
show ministers and church workers how the thing might be 
done. I recall in one of the cities seeing a church, accommo- 
dating about fifteen hundred people, almost empty on Sunday 
night, but across the street in a beautiful park there were at 
least ten thousand people idly wandering about or sitting in 
the grass. In front of the church there was a large grass-plot. 
When I became familiar with the situation, I said to the minis- 
ter, whom I met on the following morning when I addressed 
the Ministers’ Association of the city: 

“Doctor, why don’t you get out on your church steps with 
the young people for an out-door service? You have a voice 
big enough to be heard two blocks away—you can attract the 
people in the park by the use of the cornet, and then you can 
speak to them, and you can then invite them to a meeting inside 
the church and you will have an audience that will be worth 
preaching to.” 

The minister appeared to be willing to act on the suggestion, 
but he naturally replied that he would be compelled to bring 
the matter before his “‘session”—his official board. This “‘ses- 
sion” was made up of twelve good men. After they had dis- 
cussed the matter for some time, the question was decided in 
the negative, because, as one of them put it: 

“You see, we have a grass-plot in front of our church, and 
some of the people might come over out of the park and step 
on the grass.”’ 

Shades of the Gadarenes! And yet just the other side of 
that park, a Socialist held forth every Sunday night from the 
end of a bobtail cart, and he was addressing more men in a 
single night than that church reached in a year of Sunday 
nights. 

One of the most fascinating pieces of evangelistic work 
with which I had to do was that which I conducted during the 
World’s Fair in St. Louis. An average of ten meetings were 
held every day in tents, shops, gospel wagons, in the Music 





DOING WORK OF AN EVANGELIST 221 


Hall on Sunday nights, in the Gospel Hall downtown at the 
noon hour, in some of the largest hotels in the city, and inside 
the World’s Fair grounds, besides the special meetings in jails, 
in the workhouse, in some of the churches, on the streets, in 
Chinatown, and in the foreign sections of the city. Hundreds 
of young people helped in carrying out the innumerable details 
connected with the summer’s work, for the campaign was 
carried on during practically all the time that the Fair was open. 
Many of those who assisted came from my old church in St. 
Louis and had received their training in the tent or open-air 
meetings which were carried on throughout the three summers 
that I was their pastor. These young people served as the 
nucleus of the larger company who assisted in various ways. 
Music Hall was in the heart of the downtown hotel district. 
For many years it had been the center of every popular demon- 
stration in social and political life in St. Louis. The hall seated 
about four thousand persons. When it was announced that 
the Committee was to begin Sunday night meetings at this 
point, the idea was scorned by many and it was declared that 
any attempt to hold meetings in Music Hall in midsummer, 
with all the churches making strong bids for a World’s Fair 
crowd, would result in failure. But the hall was filled on the 
first Sunday night and on every Sunday night during the cam- 
paign. The most prominent preachers in the country were 
invited to address the audiences. One could tell from the 
character of the crowd that it was made up principally of non- 
church-going people, and men were always in the majority 
at the Music Hall services. Every Sunday afternoon, meetings 
were held on the porch of the Inside Inn. This hotel was inside 
the World’s Fair grounds and accommodated about five thou- 
sand guests. At these meetings were gathered representatives 
of the better classes from all parts of the world. Usually sev- 


eral thousand stood and listened in the open air to the preach- 


ing. Perhaps one of the best results of the entire series of 


“meetings was the impression made upon visiting ministers who 


attended many of the meetings conducted during the season 
at the various points, for here they learned how to reach people 
outside of the Churches, not only during a World’s Fair cam- 
paign, but in the summer season in any city. 





222 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


Having no constituency to begin with, especially in Music 
Hall, it became necessary to bring together an audience from 
the hotels and boarding houses in the neighborhood. Early 
in the campaign, a list of nearly two thousand was made up, 
and each week admission cards to the principal meetings were 
mailed to those in charge of the places of entertainment, their 
sympathetic interest having been secured through letters ad- 
dressed to them before any cards were sent. About one million 
cards and posters were mailed during the campaign. A selec- 
tion of fifty leading hotels was made, and in each one a small, 
neatly framed announcement was hung in the lobby, inviting 
World’s Fair visitors especially to the Music Hall meetings. 
A sign forty feet long and four feet wide was hung over the 
front entrance of the Hall, the reading matter being changed 
each week. Muslin signs were displayed on each of the sides 
of the Gospel wagons, advertising certain features. The dash- 
boards of the street-cars were used for the same purpose. In 
the amusement columns of the most widely read newspapers 
advertisements were inserted that rivaled in size those dis- 
played by the popular shows in town. Hundreds of large cards 
were placed in store windows and tacked on telegraph poles. 
During part of the season, a wagon displaying two signs ten 
by twelve feet was employed every day between ten and three 
o’clock to advertise special features in the downtown districts. 
Large muslin signs were also attached to the sides of tents 
and on street corners and near churches, inviting the passer-by. 
The newspapers, of course, gave large space to the meetings 
without expense. The most prominent Gospel singers in 
America were invited and many speakers from abroad took 
part in the work, although a considerable number of the local 
pastors also assisted in various ways. One of the most useful 
services rendered by this campaign during the entire summer 
was its restraining influence at a time when evil of every de- 
scription was flaunted in the faces of young men and women 
visiting the Fair and who for the time being were not held 
by home influences. 


p. 4 9,¢ 
SOLVING THE UNEMPLOYMENT PROBLEM 


HE winter of 1914-15 will probably go down in the his- 
tory of New York as the worst unemployment period 
for several decades. Four hundred thousand men and women 
were out of work and daily the roads leading to New York 
brought hundreds of others from the smaller towns and some 
near-by cities because the general opinion seemed to be that 
there was always a job to be had in the metropolis of the coun- 
try. The result was that fully 50,000 men walked the streets 
every night in the dead of winter because they felt that they had 
no place to go. Naturally there were many hold-ups by men 
who were on the verge of starvation. Many of those who went 
to the Municipal Lodging House for a night’s sleep had tucked 
away in their clothes all kinds of weapons of destruction— 
probably most of them were unaware that they would be com- 
pelled to disrobe completely in order to have their clothing 
fumigated while they slept. At the end of the season there was 
enough ammunition of this sort at the Lodging House to equip 
a regiment. 

The natural causes of unemployment were very widely dis- 
cussed. It will be recalled that President Wilson said that it 
was due entirely to “a psychological situation.” When Ex- 
President Taft was asked at a meeting in Cooper Union what 
was responsible for it, he answered, “God only knows.” The 
Socialists insisted that it was due to the competitive system. 
Politicians who were out of office said that the “‘change in the 
Administration” was responsible for it. Others blamed it on 
the lack of confidence in the business world, while there were 
quite a number who sincerely believed that Wall Street was to 
blame. Thousands were of the conviction that it was due to 


“unlimited immigration” forgetful of the fact that the per- 
223 


224 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


centage of foreign-born in the United States had not varied 
one per cent above or below 14 in sixty years. There was a 
general impression that the war was at fault, although this 
was soon disproven because the war was responsible for more 
jobs in the shops and factories than anything that had happened 
in the history of this country. Itis rather remarkable that with 
the certain knowledge that periods of unemployment come in 
cycles, nobody seems ever to get ready for it. We are always 
caught napping. When the period of unemployment does ar- 
rive, it takes us so long to get into action that before commit- 
tees and organizations are ready to do business, the normal 
processes of our industrial life seem to straighten things out 
for us. 

This period of unemployment hit my own organization rather 
hard. Just before it began I had agreements with about fifty 
cities throughout the United States and Canada for special 
pieces of work, but almost over night cancellations began to 
come in, sometimes half a dozen in a day. As my staff was 
built up of men and women who had left good positions to 
work with me, I felt it incumbent upon myself to retain them 
until they found something else. Meanwhile, with practically 
nothing to do in the office, I arranged for a series of addresses 
in. the cities in the Middle West, mortgaged my home, bor- 
rowed as much as I could on my life insurance policies, and 
continued to pay out of these proceeds the salaries of those who 
composed my staff until the last one had found a job some- 
where else. 

While on this particular speaking tour, which helped greatly 
to augment my depleted bank account, I received a telegram 
from New York asking me to become the Executive Secretary 
of the Unemployment Committee of the Federation of Churches 
of the City, and at the same time I was requested to serve on > 
Mayor Mitchell’s Committee on Employment, of which Elbert | 
H. Gary was the Chairman. I accepted both positions. Shortly 
afterward I was requested to become the Director of Relief’ 
and Emergency Measures for Mayor Mitchell’s Committee, 
my particular job in this connection being that of relating the’ 
public and private agencies in New York which had to do with 






THE UNEMPLOYMENT PROBLEM 225 


the securing of jobs for the unemployed and the furnishing 
of relief to those who needed it. 

It is interesting in this connection to note that my salary 
as Secretary of the Federation of Churches Committee was 
paid entirely by Charles L. Bernheimer, a well-known Jewish 
philanthropist of New York. 

I think I never before realized how eit were the 
programs of committees and social agencies in meeting par- 
ticular emergencies—such as unemployment, for example, 
Anything out of the routine of their particular work seemed to 
stagger them. Apparently there is always difficulty in having 
such groups face fundamental facts and deal with questions in 
a scientific manner. 

Judge Gary was undoubtedly appointed Chairman of Mayor 
Mitchell’s Committee largely because he was a big employer 
of labor. The United States Steel Corporation, of which he 
was the head, gave work to many hundreds of thousands of 
men, and it was generally stated that all Judge Gary had to do 
to start a movement toward the re-employment of those who 
were out of work was to make a request of other large corpora- 
tions that they take on, at least temporarily, some thousands of 
men, thus “setting a good example’ to the smaller employers, 
who would take hope and do likewise. But Judge Gary frankly 
stated that he himself could not order the re-employment of 
many thousands of men which the Steel Corporation was com- 
pelled to let go. He was very plainly disturbed about the entire 
situation and at a loss to know just what to do. 

I called on him at his home very early one morning on an 
urgent business matter in connection with the work of the 
Committee, and found him still in bed. He requested that I 
be brought to his room, where I found him in a red flannel 
night-shirt, sitting up in a big, old-fashioned four-poster bed, 
looking rather worn and pale. 

“There are so many things to think about,” he wearily said 
to me, but he immediately plunged into the business and in a 
few minutes was as bright and alert as I had often seen him 
before the big Committee cf which he was the head. His 
reactions were remarkable, but it was quite obvious that the 


226 A. SON OF THE BOWERY 


terrific unemployment situation in New York was a very great 
burden to this man who would undoubtedly have done anything 
in his power to better these conditions. I came to have a pro- 
found respect for the head of the United States Steel Corpora- 
tion during these very trying times. His humanitarian spirit 
and his kindliness of heart were frequently apparent. 

As can well be imagined, plans of every sort were suggested 
to the Mayor’s Committee for the relief of the unemployment 
situation. It was part of my job to listen to the many Com- 
mittees and individuals which had such plans to suggest, for 
every one who had anything to offer was gladly welcomed. I 
recall that growing out of a mass meeting held in Brooklyn, a 
rather imposing group of gentlemen came to my office in the 
Municipal Building with the suggestion that the Committee 
raise $1,000,000, to be spent in wages, and that it establish 
work-shops in which the workers were to be paid at “union 
rates.”’ It did not dawn upon the advocates of this plan that 
it would have required the raising of several million dollars in 
addition for the purchase of raw materials, the securing of 
equipment, and the payment of supervision, nor was an ade- 
quate plan for the disposition of the product of these workers 
thought out. The only suggestion that the Committee could 
make when I asked them regarding the latter point was that 
they thought the products of each group could be exchanged 


among other groups in the same company employed by the. 


city, which of course was absurd. The shirt-waist makers, 
for example, who they recommended should be organized, could 
have made enough shirt-waists in a week to have kept the rest 
of the Company clothed for a year. I suggested that while 
it was important to care for the unemployed, it’ was equally 
necessary to safeguard those who had jobs and those who were 
engaged in legitimate business enterprises so that they would 
not be undercut or undersold. 

The establishment of public works of various kinds was also 


vehemently urged and the municipality made a strenuous at- 


tempt to push in every possible way the enterprises over which 


it had control, but in most of the plans submitted by those — 


interested, it was forgotten that whatever is bad business or 


THE UNEMPLOYMENT PROBLEM 227 


bad economic practice for an individual contractor or manufac- 
turer is also bad practice for the State or the municipality. It 
was recommended that the city make repairs in the streets dur- 
ing the winter season, unmindful of the fact that the work | 
must inevitably be torn up again in the summer because of the 
impossibility of doing good work of this kind when the 
weather was cold. It meant in substance that all the people 
of the city would be compelled to pay generously for poor 
work and it was questionable whether the neediest of the un- 
employed would get the work to do. “Making work” proved 
to be a very unscientific policy. 

As is always the case when unemployment is being discussed, 
much was said during that winter about moving New York’s 
tenement poor to the farms, the usual argument being that the 
farmer can never secure the help which he needs. Of course, it 
was forgotten that the farmer needed extra help only at the 
time when he is sowing or harvesting his crops, and that dur- 
ing the winter season he himself has very little to do—and that 
the great lack of employment in New York came in the dead 
of winter when the farmer could not possibly employ extra 
help. So insistent, however, were the demands that the 
Mayor’s Committee open the way for work on the farms that 
I telephoned the head of the Farm Labor Bureau of New York 
State, asking him how many men he had sent to the farm dur- 
ing the past year. He replied that jobs had been found for 
about 5000, but in answer to my question, he said that prac- 
tically every man so placed had previously worked on a farm 
and that of those who had not done so, nearly every one came 
back to the city. 

The schemes for moving the city poor on to farms are 
always evolved by city people for their own benefit—they wish 
to be rid of a problem which seems to be beyond their own 
solution so they attempt to shift it on to the farmer. If it 
were possible to persuade a thousand thin-blooded tenement- 
house men to move on to the farms, they would meet on the 
way a thousand husky young farmers who had failed to make 
good—for social or economic reasons, it does not matter which 
—who were about to try life in the city, where incidentally they 


228 A. SON OF THE BOWERY 


generally win out. If it was not possible for the farmer boy 
to succeed on the farm, how could it be expected that an 
inexperienced city man would do so? 

One of the most pathetic scenes in New York during this 
winter was the groups of men who very early in the morning, 
before daylight, waited about newspaper offices to secure the 
first copies of the papers, glanced through them hurriedly and 
then ran to the place advertised as wanting help. In some cases 
literally hundreds applied for one job. It was estimated that 
in New York State there was spent annually in “want” ad- 
vertising in daily newspapers fully $20,000,000, or a cost of 
$5.00 per unemployed person, there being in the course of the 
normal year something like 4,000,000 persons seeking work. 
There were many possibilities of fraud in this “want’’ ad- 
vertising business, and it surely was a wasted effort, to be 
moderate in one’s statement, when 100 men applied for a 
single job with the further possibility that none was fitted for 
it. As over against this method was that of the public or 
State employment agency, which furnished jobs at an average 
cost of much less than $1.00 per man. In Illinois, for example, 
at that time, the cost was 71 cents per job; in Massachusetts 
$1.04; in Wisconsin 35 cents; in Colorado 41 cents; and in 
Oklahoma 27 cents. A labor exchange cannot create jobs, but 
it can most effectively bring together the manless job and the 
jobless man. The Labor Exchange established in New York 
City by the State became active too late to accomplish very 
much good during the winter of 1914-1915, but this method 
is undoubtedly one of the best to meet the unemployment prob- 
lem. Setter still would be the national labor exchange pro- 
posed by the Federal Labor Department through which there 
might be developed an interchange of men and jobs between 
the various States. 

About 1000 private licensed employment agencies were in 
business in New York during the winter. Many of these were 
high-grade organizations and rendered good service. There 
will no doubt be continued need for some of the private enter- 
prises in times of normal unemployment no matter how effi- 
cient the Government may become in finding jobs for the un- 


a 


THE UNEMPLOYMENT PROBLEM 229 


employed, but the possibility of fraud is so great that the State 
should exercise greatest care in protecting the victims of 
fraudulent labor exchanges. 

The seasonal worker suffered greatly in New York during 
this period. This was particularly true of the “needle trade,” 
which is New York’s chief industry. The great fluctuations in 
this trade always cause considerable unemployment even under 
normal conditions, A serious attempt was made to work out a 
plan whereby this industry could “straighten the curve” in its 
production department. The deplorable condition that existed 
in the industry was due very largely to the frequent change 
in styles, particularly in women’s apparel. The general im- 
pression seemed to be that change of style furnished more 
work, but in actual practice retailers are afraid to lay ina large 
stock because they fear being caught with out-of-season gar- 
ments on their hands. They therefore buy sparingly, and the 
manufacturer does not dare keep his employees at work with 
the hope that he can later dispose of his accumulated stock. 
The result is that he compels the workers to do rush work far 
into the night when he is busy, and there is scarcely anything 
for them to do at other times. 

This entire question of seasonal employment was discussed 
by the Mayor’s Committee, because it had been demonstrated 
in some other industries that the operations and the output 
might be so organized as to give employees fairly continuous 
work. For example, at one time every housekeeper believed 
that Monday was the only day in the week in which to have 
the laundry man call for the weekly wash. Hence, the delivery 
wagon tried to call on everybody on that day and return the 
clean laundry in three or four days. The result was that the 
employees in the laundry were rushed to exhaustion three days 
in the week and loafed the rest of the week, but to-day some 
of us will permit the delivery wagon to call on Thursday, and 
we are content to receive the clean laundry on Monday or 
Tuesday. It required a little time to become accustomed to 
this change, but now that we have become used to it, it does 
not work much of a hardship on us and it permits the laundry 
man to run his business in a saner fashion for all concerned. 


230 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


His employees work about an equal number of hours every day 
and their work on the whole is steadier and more satisfactory. 

The readiness of the Mayor’s Committee to grasp at almost 
every kind of proposal as a solution was demonstrated one day 
when a rather spectacular and fantastic plan to house homeless 
men was suggested by a representative of the “hoboes,”’ who 
had wandered into the city. The latter requested that the city 
give them the use of an old building which they desired to 
convert into a “Hotel de Gink,” furnishing it themselves and 
foraging for food throughout the city. The plan was to estab- 
lish a kind of communistic enterprise in which those in the 
Hotel would pool their earnings and their “findings.” The 
men who constituted this group tried to make it plain to the 
Committee that they distinguished between the “hobo,” the 
“tramp” and the “down-and-out.” The “hobo,” they said, was 
a workingman who preferred to wander from city to city, find- 
ing such employment as he could, but always ready to work 
when it was possible; the “tramp” was a man who would not 
work and was often a criminal—with these the regular “hobo” 
had no dealings; the “down-and-out’”? was a man who was 
totally incapacitated. 

When this proposal was submitted to the Committee, I was 
the only one of the entire group of nearly 100 who spoke against 
it, pointing out the inevitable result of permitting several 
hundred men of this type to live under conditions which re- 
quired the very highest kind of character and sacrifice. Then 
there were certain moral and sanitary conditions which would 
inevitably have to be considered, but to my pleadings the Com- 
mittee paid absolutely no attention. They turned over one of 
the City buildings on Center Street and christened it ‘““Hotel de 
Gink” as requested. 

Within a week complaints began to come to the Committee 
through the Police Department, and in a very few days there- 
after the building was closed and the “hoboes”’ scattered. 

Early in the winter rather strenuous attempts were made to 
have the city open the armories for work shops, but those in 
authority, while apparently willing to codperate in relieving the 
suffering among the unemployed, were afraid that the gather- 


THE UNEMPLOYMENT PROBLEM 231 


ing together of great masses of unemployed men in buildings 
stored with arms and ammunition might result disastrously 
should radical leadership be developed. 

Continuous efforts were made by so-called “Parlor Social- 
ists’ and some social workers to create a stampede of the 
unemployed in order to “impress” the Mayor’s Committee with 
the seriousness of the situation—as though the Committee did 
not realize that it was up against as troublesome a condition as 
any group of men could possibly face. Night after night 
groups of such agitators of social unrest appeared upon the 
various bread lines in the city, telling the wretched men who 
stood there that they were fools to beg for a loaf of bread and 
a cup of coffee at midnight, and then sleep in a hallway or on 
the docks because they had not the nerve to make a demonstra- 
tion which would show New York what it meant to be out of 
a job. But the men who crowded the bread lines were strangely 
docile. Revolutionary or radical doctrines made little impres- 
sion upon them. Large numbers were by no means tramps and 
“down-and-outs’’—it was pathetic to see how considerable a 
percentage were those who had apparently been working steadily 
until that winter. 

Night after night I took my place at the head of the bread 
line, pulling up my overcoat collar and jamming down my 
hat to keep out the cold, and going straight down the line of 
from one to two thousand men, I interviewed more or less 
briefly, but sometimes at length, as many men as there was 
time for, trying to find out where they came from, what they 
expected to find in New York, and discovering, if possible, 
just what sort of men they were. There they were, scarcely a 
man having an overcoat—sometimes they had only an under- 
shirt, a pair of trousers, a coat and a pair of shoes and an old 
hat, with the thermometer almost down to zero. Promptly at 
twelve o’clock the side-door of Fleischmann’s Bakery at Broad- 
way and Eleventh Street was opened—for this is where the 
biggest line was formed—and as each man received his loaf 
of bread and cup of coffee, he promptly swallowed the hot 
coffee, and tucking the loaf of bread under his coat he would 
run to some doorway or to some other sheltered place, liter- 


232 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


ally tear the loaf of bread to pieces and devour it like a wild 
animal. It was no wonder that men feared being out of work 
more than they fear going to hell. 

We saw to it that every man had at least a place in which 
to sleep and that he started the day with something to eat, but — 
the great number of unemployed made it utterly impossible 
to give every man a job that would keep him alive. Many 
were shipped back to their own towns because they would have 
a better chance there than in New York. 

One of the most serious situations produced by the large 
numbers of homeless men that crowded the city was the use > 
of the back rooms of saloons in the downtown districts for 
lodging-house purposes after the legal hour for closing. 
Thousands of men patronized these saloons, a five-cent drink 
entitling them to a “flop’—a place to sleep. Naturally, these 
places were outrageously unsanitary, but the authorities insisted 
that if they were to force the saloon to close it would throw 
these unfortunate thousands on to the street on cold, bitter 
nights. 

The Municipal Lodging House, controlled by the city, did 
an excellent piece of work in meeting the needs of homeless 
men, arrangements being made to care for at least three thou- 
sand men in the house, and by utilizing the annex across the 
street they were ready to take care of fully twice this number. 
The question as to whether out-of-town men should be cared 
for by New York was discussed by various groups at work on 
this problem, and it was finally agreed that as other cities 
were undoubtedly caring for some of New York’s citizens 
who had sought work elsewhere, it was only fair that New 
York should make provision for these men from out of town 
who had wandered into the city in search of work. 

A study of about 1500 men at the Municipal Lodging House 
revealed the fact that about 20 per cent would not work even 
though jobs were offered them; 20 per cent could ‘not work 
because they were altogether incapacitated; Io per cent could 
be put into fair physical condition if they were given proper 
medical attention, and the remainder—so per cent—were will- 
ing to work and fit for jobs if they could be found. 


THE UNEMPLOYMENT PROBLEM 233 


It became necessary for the Unemployment Committee of 
the New York Federation of Churches to raise a considerable 
sum of money to carry on its work, and Theodore Roosevelt 
was urged to give an address at the Metropolitan Opera House, 
the proceeds of which were to be devoted to the Committee’s 
work. Mr. Roosevelt spoke on his trip to South America, 
reading his speech as was usually his custom. I remember, 
with much amusement, that as he finished each sheet he threw 
it back over his shoulder onto the platform, until when he 
had completed his address he stood in the midst of a heap of 
his white-sheeted manuscript, which was quickly grabbed up 
_ by souvenir hunters from the audience after Mr. Roosevelt had 
left the platform. 

The Police Department of New York, whose work had 
already been largely socialized under the direction of Commis- 
sioner Arthur Woods, undertook to find jobs for men through 
its patrolmen. These officers went from house to house, ask- 
ing that the unemployed be given a chance to keep areaways 
and sidewalks free from dirt and litter, each house-owner pay- 
ing a small sum per week directly to the man who did the job, 
but the patrolman on the beat seeing to it that he was paid. 
When enough jobs of this character were found in a block or 
contiguous territory to permit a man to earn a minimum of 
$10.00 a week, he was given a broom and put to work. The 
policeman also saw to it that he did his work properly. 

Another department of the city that rendered excellent 
service was the office of George McAneny, President of the 
Board of Aldermen. Contributions of food were obtained by 
Mr. McAneny from the leading hotels in the city—in some 
cases these hotels preparing a special heavy soup or stew, al- 
though in most instances the food regularly served to the guests 
was contributed. This food was taken every morning in auto- 
mobiles to the various workshops being conducted by the 
Mayor’s Committee and the churches, where the men and 
women were served with a midday meal, the remainder of the 
food being taken to their homes. Special care was taken 
that this food was good and wholesome because, as one of the 
hotel men put it, “We could serve food that happened to be a 


234 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


little off to our guests and explain the situation and make good, 
but if we serve poor food to the unemployed, we would never 
hear the end of it either from the public or the unemployed 
themselves.” 

“Bundle Day” was inaugurated by the Women’s Division 
of the Mayor’s Committee on Unemployment, and was or- 
ganized and pushed to a successful finish by Miss Frances E. 
Kellor. Five hundred thousand bundles of old and new cloth- 
ing were received and distributed among the poor of the city, 
the Police Department, the Public Schools, the Street Clean- 
ing Department, the Churches and Neighborhood organiza- 
tions, the Express Companies, and the Railroads, and some of 
the large Department Stores cooperating with the Committee. 
Four large buildings were used. The entire enterprise was 
conducted upon the basis of a department store organization, 
the Wanamaker store furnishing a large staff of expert 
workers to organize the various “departments.” 

Many of the labor unions in New York assisted in meeting 
the unemployment situation. They assessed their working 
members five per cent of their wages for the benefit of the un- 
employed, and in some cases where it could be arranged, mem- 
bers worked only five days per week, permitting the unem- 
ployed to have their jobs on the sixth day. The out-of-work 
funds which many labor unions provide were completely ex- 
hausted because of the unusual tax made upon them. It was 
significant that only in rare cases did trade-unionists apply to 
the regular relief agencies for help. The unions ordinarily 
took care of their own needy members. It was probably true 
that more church members applied to relief agencies for 
assistance than did members of trade-unions, if one were to 
eliminate the Hebrews, who are rather poorly organized as 
trade-unionists and who, in New York at any rate, are often 
extremely poor. It was frequently pointed out during the 
winter that the city owed organized labor a debt for relieving 
the pressure of poverty through the liberal use of its funds 
and its other methods for caring for its own members. 

But in the last analysis, it was undoubtedly true that the 
churches of New York did more to meet the unemployment 


THE UNEMPLOYMENT PROBLEM 235 


situation than either the Mayor’s Committee or any other 
organization. In this particular case the churches were the 
first to organize and actually furnish jobs—indeed, the churches 
found more work for the unemployed than did the Mayor’s 
Committee, and if the truth must be told, the Mayor’s Com- 
mittee, because of its inability to organize quickly and carry out 
most elaborate plans which its experts were quite proficient 
in preparing, included the work of the churches as part of its 
own enterprise, paying part of their expenses in order to make 
a report of activities actually carried on and jobs actually fur- 
nished. The Protestant Episcopal Churches of New York be- 
gan very early in the winter to establish workshops, the work 
originating in St. Bartholomew’s Church and being under the 
immediate supervision of Deaconess Charlotte M. Boyd. The 
churches employed continuously throughout the winter thou- 
sands of men rolling bandages for city hospitals and for the 
warring European nations. Men worked five hours per day, 
five days per week and received fifty cents per day and a mid- 
day meal. Additional emergency workshops were conducted 
for women, who were paid at the rate of sixty cents per day, 
and who were employed at making women’s and children’s 
garments which were disposed of in such a manner as not to 
come into competition with regular dealers and manufacturers. 
An “Unemployment Sunday” was observed by the churches 
early in the winter when a special appeal was made to furnish 
work of some kind to those who needed it. A card containing 
suggestions for possible jobs was widely distributed, listing 
about a hundred various kinds of work that might be given 
in an emergency. These suggestions were offered under classi- 
fied lists to housekeepers, office managers, storekeepers and 
landlords. Following are some of the suggested jobs: 


To HovusEKEEPers—Clean cellars, attics, closets, and 
areas; paint walls outside and inside; paint woodwork; pol- 
ish floors and furniture; attend to carpentry jobs from cellar 
to roof; have doors adjusted; have windows tightened; have 
carpets beaten and cleaned; attend to plumbing jobs; attend 
to papering and calcimining; catalogue the library; mend 


236 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


library books; have mattresses mended and re-made; clean 
garage; polish brass-work and silverware; repair awnings; 
upholster furniture; mend carpets and rugs; repair transom 
fixtures; repair window shades; repair light fixtures; clean 
flues and plumbing traps; whitewash cellar and coal bins; 
cut and chop deadwood and boxes for kindling; make gar- 
den and lawn improvements. 

To Orrice Manacers—Arrange old files; classify or 
catalogue old material on the shelves or in the corner; check 
up accumulation of reports; have the auditing done; re- 
arrange partitions; do that circularizing campaign; copy 
records; tabulate and classify past experience; make up new 
list of old customers. 

To Store-KEEPERs—Take inventory of stock; have the 
cellar cleaned; remove packing cases; paint the woodwork; 
build extra shelves; have your accounts audited; get out cir- 
culars to your customers; attend to cellar elevator; have the 
sidewalk work done; do neighborhood sample distributing. 

To LanpLorps—lInspect your property now, and do not 
leave it entirely to your agents; attend to the plumbing and 
painting; have the cellars waterproofed; clean walls and 
ceilings; attend to papering and calcimining; repair and clean 
areas; repair woodwork; clean chimneys; repair sidewalks; 
repair outside walls; repair roofs; make garden and lawn 
improvements. | 


“Give a man a day’s work” was the slogan used in connection 
with this particular effort. 

The proposal was made to the various churches by the Un- 
employment Committee of the Federation of Churches that at 
their midweek meeting they devote a few minutes to the “good 
and welfare of our neighbors,’ when the question should be 
asked, “‘Are any of our neighbors in distress of any kind?”— 
and if any were so reported, somebody was immediately to be 
appointed to render such assistance as was required. If the 
local church could not furnish the needs of such persons, the 
Central Committee was prepared to do so or to suggest how 
it might be done. A day and night telephone service was main- 


THE UNEMPLOYMENT PROBLEM 237 


tained by this Committee throughout the entire winter for all 
kinds of emergency calls. The churches codperated closely 
with the recognized relief agencies in ‘all important things. 
several district organizations were formed by the Federation 
of Churches which were equipped to take caré of applicants 
for relief and which found jobs for many men and women. 
In some instances local secretaries were employed by these 
district organizations to serve the needy in the community. 

“Be a good neighbor’ was another movement which I 
inaugurated. One saw this slogan all over the city on the 
screens of hundreds of picture houses, on posters in department 
stores, railroad stations, office buildings and theaters. Atten- 
tion was called to the necessity for food, clothing, shelter and 
other requirements for the unemployed, giving specific direc- 
tions how such service might be rendered, thus democratizing 
the entire task of helping the unemployed. Many hundreds of 
volunteers wrote to my office, offering their services in this 
connection, and in a large number of cases permanent relation- 
ships were established so that the “good neighbor” thereafter 
saw to it that the particular family or individual for whom he 
had become responsible during this special period of need be- 
came his permanent charge. Many of the particular cases 
taken care of in this way were furnished by the regular relief 
agencies which had previously thoroughly investigated their 
necessities. 

For the benefit of individuals in the churches and others who 
desired to be of service in special cases, the Church Federation 
Committee printed an informational folder regarding the func- 
tions, resources and availability of the principal agencies in 
New York which might help in cases of special distress, listing 
the civic, philanthropic and health agencies, public institutions, 
and all others that render service in relation to relief or un- 
employment. 

For the poorer sections of the city special surveys were 
made and: conferences held, and the churches in these communi- 
ties were backed to the full extent of the Committee’s ability 
through special funds and services. The finding of a job was 
urged upon the entire membership of the New York churches 


238 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


as a “religious task.” It was shown that the securing of work 
would save many an individual and family from entire collapse, 
and that at that particular time jobs were by all means the best 
thing that could be given to keep them from going to complete 
destruction. Frequent bulletins were issued to the leaders 
throughout the entire city. A particular day was set aside for 
canvassing the neighborhoods of the churches in order to find 
jobs for the unemployed. Committees were organized in many 
of the churches for this purpose, and the net result of this 
effort was not only most satisfactory to the Committee, but the 
individual members of the church who rendered this service 
became enthusiastic in the performance of this task; they saw 
how easily a most practical effort for the relief of the poor 
may be organized in their own communities. 

I prepared a series of “Unemployment Don’ts’” for em- 
ployers which were widely printed in the newspapers, not only 
of New York, but throughout the country during the winter. 
The following were some of the suggestions: 


Don’t wait for a panacea for the unemployment problem 
—so far as you can, work it out in your own field. When 
enough of us do this, the question will be settled. The un- 
employment problem must be democratized. Anyway, there 
is no panacea. When an “expert” presents one, it is time 
to adjourn the meéting. 

Don’t forget that whatever is bad business practice for 
you must be bad business practice for the municipality; 
therefore do not expect your City Officials to become re- 
sponsible for an unemployment-relief proposition which is 
based upon bad economic principles. 

Don’t try merely to find an excuse which may justify 
your inactivity ; but rather find ways in which you may make 
jobs as a civic or religious duty. 

Don’t let your factory run down at the heels. If your 
output is running below normal, utilize this slack period to 
overhaul your plant and machinery. You can do it better 
now than when your factory is running full time. 

Don’t cut down the rate of wages. It will be much fairer 


THE UNEMPLOYMENT PROBLEM 2389 


to reduce the hours of labor or the days per week, thus dis- 
tributing the work among a larger number. You will re- 
ceive full value for your output when you finally sell it. It 
isn’t fair to take advantage of the workingman’s helpless 
situation simply because he must have a job, fio matter what 
he’s paid. 

Don’t turn down a man simply because you cannot give 
him a steady job. Sometimes a day’s work will put new life 
into a man who has lost all hope. There are odd jobs which 
may justify your employing him temporarily. Make a sys- 
tematic study of your plant and its surroundings in order to 
find odd jobs. 

Don’t turn away applicants for minor positions on account 
of their poor appearance—if you give them a little work it 
will help them pull themselves together. You will probably 
find that the applicant for a job who wears a seedy coat 
will take on a different appearance when he’s on the job. 

Don’t give your foreman permission to discharge a man 
without grave fault or the very best reasons. Ask yourself 
what will become of this workingman’s wife and children 
if he loses his job simply because the foreman had a grouch. 

Don’t fail to pass applicants along to any other job that 
you may have heard about if you cannot find jobs for them. 
Forget your dignity and your superior position, and remem- 
ber that the applicant for the job is a human being, and that 
it may save him from despair if you can help him now. 


While it is probably true that the bread lines established 
throughout the city helped in a good many cases, there can be 
no doubt of the demoralizing effect of the bread line upon 
both the donor and the object of this form of charity. To the 
donor it becomes too easy a solution for the problems of pov- 
erty, and the man who takes the loaf of bread and cup of cof- 
fee night after night can never again be the same high-spirited 
worker that he may have been. Indeed, the worst effect of 
unemployment upon the mechanic particularly is, not that he 
suffers from hunger, but that his character slowly becomes 
weakened and his skill is lost. He deteriorates in almost every 


240 A SON OF THE BOWERY 

way. The man who has been out of work for six months will 
find it extremely difficult to become the man that he was before 
he lost his job. 

Certain “experts” on “panhandlers” and the unemployed 
in general told us rather insistently that the wood pile was the 
acid test for the “‘job hunters.”” This may have been true for 
husky, well-fed men, but the test fell down when it was applied 
to thin-blooded anemic men and those who had been suffering 
from influenza and pneumonia, and there were more such cases 
than the ‘experts’? seemed to know about. Furthermore, the 
latter were the last to find jobs, and the effects of unemploy- 
ment were felt among them most keenly long after the unem- 
ployment situation had begun to improve. For after the win- 
ter had passed, the perilous months of March and April, with 
their high peak of pneumonia, had yet to be faced by those who 
were the least prepared to meet them. Probably those who 
suffered most in New York during this winter were not the 
men on the bread line, but the semi-professional people who in 
many industrial enterprises were regarded as luxuries because 
they did not immediately produce. These people did not hang 
around bread lines and they were too proud to ask for help 
from anybody. Then there were the gentlewomen who had 
never been out of work. There came into my office one day the 
widow of a former assistant district attorney in New York 
City. She had been raised at Newport and had about her all © 
the signs of culture—at least, in her speech and manner— — 
but her clothes were poor and even though it was raining, she — 
had no umbrella. I afterwards learned that she had twice at-_ 
tempted suicide because of the distressing situation in which — 
she found herself. Furthermore, the clerks and stenographers — 
who lived in hall bedrooms and could not pay their rent and — 
who needed to make a good appearance in finding any kind © 
of job suffered greatly. How many of these there were, and 
what they did to live through the winter, nobody will ever 
know. It was quite apparent as a result of my interview of © 
many thousands of individuals during that winter that in- 
efficiency was a frequent cause of unemployment even during — 
normal conditions, and it became impressed upon me that public — 





THE UNEMPLOYMENT PROBLEM 241 


schools must give more attention to industrial education. As 
a matter of fact, the curriculum of the public schools, I found 
upon investigation, is framed up for the most part to meet the 
requirements of the very small percentage of children that go 
to college. Our public educational system has not departed 
very radically from that which was in vogue when only priests 
and the leisure class were educated. 

Likewise, the large number of misfits in life was due to the 
small attention given to vocational guidance. When boys and 
girls left school, they went out merely to hunt “jobs” and it 
did not matter much what kind of jobs they were, so long as 
they furnished immediate work. Often in after years they 
found themselves in blind alleys because they had become too 
old to hold the jobs which they obtained as children. Later 
they helped swell the ranks of tramps and hoboes, and society, 
which was careless in training them to become good citizens, 
hunts them and is worried by them when work is scarce be- 
cause they then become a menace to the state. 

After all, assuming that a worker has become competent, 
it frequently happens that for some of the reasons already 
given, and many which might be added, it is impossible for him 
to fortify himself against times of unemployment which in most 
cases seem to be inevitable, and for reasons for which he is 
not at all responsible. Usually it is a question of being given 
a chance to earn a living wage. Students of economics would 
understand at once that it is not so much a question of the 
number of dollars a person earns which determines whether or 
not he is earning a living wage—it is a question of what these 
dollars will buy, because the purchasing power of the dollar 
varies so greatly not only at different times but in different 
parts of the country. | 

Before an industry is permitted to establish itself in the 
community, it should be investigated as to its working condi- 
tions and the wages it pays so that it may not later become a 
charge upon the community, in that the community must take 
care of its derelicts when this “parasite” industry has squeezed 
the vitality out of the workers employed for a brief period at 
less than a living wage. Every industry seeking to take ad- 


242 A SON OF THE BOWERY, 


vantage of a city’s reputation, good-will or other asset, which 
have been acquired through many years of faithful dealing 
with its citizens, or because of the development of strong com- 
mercial pride, should be asked to furnish a clean “bill of 
health,” just as a philanthropic or social agency which desires 
to have the support of the city is expected to give an account of 
its methods and work before it is permitted to operate. Whether 
or not it is possible to enforce such a policy through process 
of law, it may easily be done by commercial clubs, chambers of 
commerce, or legitimate employers’ associations. 

An industry is self-supporting only when it yields wages 
sufficient to maintain the workers during times of inevitable 
unemployment, when they are compelled to stand in reserve, 
awaiting the convenience of the employer, as well as when they 
are actively engaged. It may be necessary to work out in every 
industry a system of compulsory, subsidized, unemployment in- 
surance, the trade bearing the cost. At any rate, while em- 
ployers are making plans for increased efficiency by the intro- 
duction of new machinery and better systems, they cannot 
afford to neglect the human elements, which are after all their 
chief asset. 

Unemployment will some day be fought just as we have 
waged war against typhoid and tuberculosis. In former days 
when great epidemics swept over the city we said it was due to 
a “dispensation of Providence.” ‘To-day we hold the Board 
of Health responsible. In like manner we shall not try to find 
refuge behind a lazy man’s excuse when thousands of men and 
women are unemployed. Society will soon learn that it is as 
guilty if men do not work as though they worked under un- 
sanitary conditions, | 


XX 


MEETING SOME OF AMERICA’S BIG MEN 


I MET and talked with Theodore Roosevelt many times dur- 

ing the twenty years that I was engaged in various national 
enterprises, the first time being in the White House on a Mon- 
day morning after I had preached in a Washington church. 
Inevitably our conversation drifted toward the relation of the 
workingman to the Church. 

“Tf there is one thing above another that I desire for the 
Dutch Reformed Church, it is that it may become a church in 
which the workingman will feel at home. Whether it be true 
or not, there has arisen in the mind of the average working- 
man the impression that the Church is too ‘swell’ for him. 
You know I have very little use for that sort of thing. That 
is why I attend that little church over there—’ pointing 
through the walls of the White House to what I afterward 
found out was a comparatively small church building. 

Mr. Roosevelt’s interest in ordinary people was always to 
me one of his most marked characteristics. During his visit 
to the Labor Temple to which reference has already been 
made, we sat before the meeting behind a curtain which shut 
us off from the view of the audience but which gave us the 
opportunity to see every face in the crowd. Singling out 
various individuals Mr. Roosevelt asked me most interestedly 
who this and that person was, wanting to know something 
about them; and they were invariably the humblest people that 
came within his vision. His close association with Jacob Riis, 
about which Mr. Riis often told me, proved his interest in the 
welfare of common men. 

One morning a committee of about a dozen men including 
myself went to meet Mr. Roosevelt at a small hotel in New 
York, to talk over with him a certain situation concerning 


which he wanted advice. As I came into the room William 
243 


244 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


Fellowes Morgan, one of New York’s most noted civic and 
commercial leaders, introduced me to the President. 

Whereupon Mr. Roosevelt smiled and said to Mr. Morgan: 
“Oh, yes, I have known Mr. Stelzle for a good many years. 
I have read all of his books, and I’m proud to say that I’ve sat 
at his feet and learned of him.” 

Although Mr. Roosevelt had the reputation among some 
people of being strong-willed and self-opinionated, I found 
him to be exactly the reverse in my dealings with him, and 
this occasion proved what I have just said. He had come 
into the conference with a carefully prepared plan which he 
himself had drawn up and which he read to the group of men 
whom he had invited to confer with him. Immediately sev- 
eral of those present began to criticize Mr. Roosevelt’s pro- 
posal, and he sat listening, without saying a word. When they 
had finished he saw the defects of his plan, and promptly 
threw it into the waste-basket, saying: 

“That settles that. Now what have you got to say?” And 
for several hours he listened to his advisers and took from 
them the counsel which they gave. 

When I began my independent work, I wrote to Mr. Roose- 
velt, telling him about my plans just as he was starting on his 
famous trip to South America, but before going away he 
dropped me a line, saying: 


Good for you! J am extremely pleased at what you are 
about to undertake. When I get back in the spring, I hope 
you will let me come in and see you so as to understand more 
clearly just what you are doing. Good luck to you always. 
I believe in you with all my heart. 


In the Associated Press stories of a speaking tour Mr. 
Roosevelt made in New England shortly before this time, the 
President was reported as saying that I was one of the men 
who had given him new light on the social and economic situa- 
tion in this country. 


When Mr. Roosevelt organized the Progressive Party, I 
accepted the candidacy for the Assembly in Essex County, New © 


OO a 


SOME OF AMERICA’S BIG MEN) 245 


Jersey, where I lived at that time, mainly for the purpose of 
giving me a good excuse to make campaign speeches for Mr. 
Roosevelt throughout the State. The leaders of the Progres- 
sive Party in Essex County had prepared a “‘slate’’ which was 
to be submitted to about four hundred delegates who had been 
invited to a dinner in Krueger’s Auditorium in Newark, but the 
convention went into session and nominated its own men, al- 
though it was agreed that all the candidates should be heard. 

Matters went along swimmingly until the twelve candidates 
for the Assembly were to be nominated. When my name was 
suggested by the committee, an apparently organized move- 
ment to nominate the secretary of the convention in opposi- 
tion to me became evident. 

“We want Smith—we want Smith—we want Smith!” they 
shouted in unison. 

“Mr. Smith’—this really was not his name—made the first 
speech, and he said in substance: 

“You boys know me—I have been secretary of this com- 
mittee ever since it was organized, working night and day to 
put this thing across in the county. I think I deserve this 
office, and I hope you'll vote for me. That’s all I’ve got to 
say.” 

When I was introduced by the chairman, I told the dele- 
gates that actually I did not want the office, that I was as busy 
as I could be, not only in New Jersey, but throughout the 
entire country, promoting the principles for which the Pro- 
gressive Party had declared itself, and that I had permitted 
the use of my name merely because the voters in the section 
of the county in which I lived had at a popular meeting unani- 
mously nominated me for the office. 

“Tf you want Mr. Smith for your candidate, by all means 
nominate him, and I assure you that I will talk for Mr. Smith 
and work for him with far more enthusiasm than I would 
work for my own election.” 

And to the amazement of the entire convention, when the 
vote was taken I received nearly four hundred votes, while 
Mr. Smith received about half a dozen. As a result of this 
nomination I was given an unusual opportunity to make all 


246 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


the speeches that I cared to in favor of the National candidate. 

Calling on Mr. Roosevelt for an appointment one morning 
at his office in New York, I was told that some cameramen 
had just finished putting him into some motion pictures, but 
that at that moment he was being shaved by the barber, who 
had come to his office, and that he was being interviewed by 
two newspaper men and was conferring with a delegation from 
out of town; but that if I wanted to go in and join the “gang” 
there was no doubt that Mr. Roosevelt would be glad to see 
me. But in less than ten minutes I was alone with Mr. Roose- 
velt. 

I found him thoroughly excited. President Wilson had 
been in New York the day before and had made his famous 
reversal regarding his attitude toward the war. Ina speech he 
had declared that he now favored having the United States en- 
ter the war, and was ready to go the limit in fighting the Ger- 
mans. Mr. Roosevelt was himself to speak in the Brooklyn 
Academy of Music a few days later, and he had his prepared 
speech in his hand and began reading certain passages to me, 
asking me what I thought of the ideas which he was to advo- 
cate. The memory of the details of the speech has gone from 
me. I can simply picture Mr. Roosevelt excitedly walking up 
and down his office reading and punctuating what he had to 
say by jabbing his finger at certain paragraphs as he read 
them. 

When Chief Justice William Howard Taft was President, 
I called on him at the White House to invite him to speak at 
one of the big workingmen’s meetings which I held annually 
in connection with the Presbyterian General Assembly. I was 
ushered into Mr. Taft’s private office and stood at the side of 
his desk as I presented my case. He listened most attentively, 
with that ever-present little twinkle in his eye, and interrupted 
me to tell some stories about preachers, at which he himself 
laughed most heartily and in which I joined—because they 
were really very funny stories. Indeed, as we swapped stories 
I completely forgot that I was talking to the President of the 
United States, and I was abashed when I started to leave to 
find that I had been sitting on the edge of President Taft’s 


SOME OF AMERICA’S BIG MEN 247 


flat-top desk. I suppose that Mr. Taft’s inimitable little 
chuckle had put me off my guard. 

A newspaper syndicate by which I was once employed one 
day wired me to get an interview with John D. Rockefeller, Jr., 
on the labor question. Mr. Rockefeller received me very gra- 
ciously, saying that he had known about me and my work. An 
hour’s talk with him on some of the most vital social and eco- 
nomic questions that affect labor’s welfare left me with the 
feeling that he thinks as deeply and sincerely about big moral 
and ethical problems as he does about financial questions. I 
found myself inclined to agree with the statement made to 
me by an official of the United Mine Workers of America, 
who had spent much time in Colorado, where they had just 
passed through some rather unpleasant labor troubles, that he 
felt Mr. Rockefeller was thoroughly sincere, and that he would 
do the right thing. 

There was complete absence of formality or display of any 
kind in Mr. Rockefeller’s office. In the most democratic man- 
ner imaginable we talked; he with no apparent effort to con- 
ceal his thoughts, and I with the feeling that I was speaking 
for labor, trying to express its viewpoint. There was one 
striking thing about this man who had been so severely abused 
by those who did not agree with him; in all my conversation 
with him there was not the slightest trace of bitterness or even. 
sarcasm when he spoke of those who were opposing him. 

“What about a ‘living wage’? was one of my questions. 
“How much do you think the average man should earn?” 

Without hesitation he replied: ““What he earns should give 
him a decent home. He should be able to educate his children. 
He should be able to afford reasonable social and religious ad- 
vantages. And he ought to be able to lay aside something for 
a time of special need.” 

But right then one of the Rockefeller secrets of getting rich 
was revealed. 

“Some of the miners in our camps won’t buy ready-made 
clothes,’ he said. “They have them made to order. I wore 
ready-made clothes for some years,’ he added. I almost 
gasped audibly as he told me that he used to walk down Sixth 


248 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


Avenue in New York to select a cheaper tie than he could buy 
in the store of a famous haberdasher on Fifth Avenue whose 
name he mentioned, where he would be compelled to pay a 
couple of dollars more for it. For I was wearing at that mo- 
ment a tie that came from the Fifth Avenue shop. 

The Bureau of Social Hygiene, which Mr. Rockefeller or- 
ganized—the business of which it was to study the question 
of prostitution—had made its annual report a few days before, 
and I said to Mr. Rockefeller: 

“Do you believe that a considerable number of women be- 
come prostitutes because they do not receive a living wage?” 

Mr. Rockefeller replied: 

“This is the general impression—it was my impression at 
one time—but apparently those who have studied the question 
fully agree that women do not go wrong merely because they 
do not receive a certain wage. Women’s morals are not de- 
termined by the difference of a dollar or so a week in their 
wages. There are many other elements that enter into this 
question. Often it’s a matter of clothes, desire for a good 
time, loneliness, misunderstanding on the part of the girl’s 
mother, or harsh treatment at home.” 

Then he added: 

“TI am sure that working-women as a class are just as moral 
as those of the so-called “upper-class.’”’ After a moment’s 
reflection: “More so, when you consider the temptations to 
which they are subjected.” 

Mr. Rockefeller said in answer to my question whether he 
thought the fundamental principles of Jesus could be applied 
to the problems of industrial life to-day: | 

“Yes. But who will interpret those principles so as to give © 
us the final word regarding them? We cannot lay down © 
ethical laws, and compel all others to abide by them. The © 
Bible doesn’t tell us specifically what we must do. I some- 
times wish it did. It would make life so much simpler. But — 
no doubt it’s a good thing it doesn’t. We are all of us com- — 
pelled to think through these questions for ourselves. We 
must not become dogmatic about these matters. Nor dare we 





SOME OF AMERICA’S BIG MEN 249 


decide them for others. Every man must work out his own 
salvation. 

“T believe that labor and capital are partners,’’ was another 
of his answers. “Partners cannot get along very well unless 
they understand each other’s viewpoints. One of the reasons 
there are so many labor troubles is that we are forgetting 
the human element. Labor is being looked upon as a com- 
modity, as part of an equipment, as something that may be 
bought and sold. We sometimes forget that we are dealing 
with human beings. The big thing we've got to do is to inject 
the spirit of brotherhood into the labor question. There is no 
other way.” 

“Are employers of labor as a class giving serious thought 
to the solution of the labor problem?” I asked. 

“No,” he replied, slowly, and with apparent regret. “Their 
attitude is too largely negative. Few of them have positive 
plans. They seem to expect workingmen themselves to arrive 
blunderingly at constructive programs.”’ 

“What about your attitude toward organized labor ?”’ I sug- 
gested. 

“Our men may organize if they wish. We do not discrimi- 
nate against them because they are members of the labor union. 
Our only contention is that they have no right to keep out of 
the mines men who may not wish to join the labor union.” 

He reflected a moment, then said earnestly: 

“There’s a great change coming in the selection of the kind 
of men who will direct great industrial enterprises. Hereto- 
fore the chief consideration has been a man’s ability as a finan- 
cier and organizer. In the future first place must be given 
to his ability in getting along with other men. He must have 
more of the social spirit. This does not necessarily mean mere 
sociability, although that will help. He must have a keener 
sense of social justice and fair dealing. For the labor problem 
is coming more and more to be a great human problem.” 

Mr. Rockefeller impressed me as a man who, with the enor- 
mous responsibility of being the richest man in the world, is 
honestly trying to administer his great fortune so that hu- 
manity will get the benefit of it. Possibly some of his ad- 


250 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


visers may fool him once in a while, and he occasionally may 
make mistakes; but the only fair way to judge a man is by 
his general tendencies. 

Eagerly I class Dwight L. Moody, the evangelist, among 
the great men I have known. He was a big-hearted man who 
knew the needs of the world and faithfully tried to supply 
them, not only in his own special field of evangelism, but in 
the field of education, of social service, and of general human 
betterment. Up to the time he died he probably set in motion 
more organizations and movements in this country for the 
building up of the people than any other man. It is my con- 
viction that some day the directors of the Hall of Fame in 
New York City will be proud to add his name to the list of 
notables who should be remembered for the greatness of the 
contribution which they made toward the common good. 

Personally, I owe him a debt of gratitude. When I desired to 
become a preacher and had been rejected by several theological 
seminaries for my lack of scholarship, somebody told me about 
the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. I wrote Mr. Moody, 
telling him about my situation and referring him to a mutual 
friend for particulars. A few days later Mr. Moody met this — 
friend. The big, human evangelist asked him simply one ques- 
tion, “Has he sand?” 

I was accepted. No doubt “sand” is not a very practical — 
substitute for scholarship in a theological seminary, but I have © 
always been grateful to the man who made it possible for men 
like myself to enter the Christian ministry. 

It was a rare treat when Mr. Moody came to address the - 
students at the Institute. The fine ideals he held up before 
them were decidedly inspirational. Perhaps this was the best © 
service that he rendered to the students. I never heard him 
without coming away with a bigger conception of what it 
meant to be a Christian worker. And always his message was 
a sane, healthy one, and invariably there was a touch of humor. 
In the class-room he often asked the students for new ideas. 

One day a particularly clever plan was suggested to Mr. 
Moody for Sunday-school work when he was presiding at the 
Institute. 


ee 







SOME OF AMERICA’S BIG MEN 251 


“What do you think about this?” he asked the superin- 
tendent of the Moody Church Sunday School, who was 


present. 

“We have been aiming to do it for two years,” replied the 
superintendent. 

“Don’t you think it’s about time you fired?” quickly laughed 
Mr. Moody. 


He never seemed to me just like an evangelist. There was 
an utter lack of professionalism about him. He did not need 
to be assured that his campaign would be a success before he 
began his work. To him it was a question of an opportunity 
for doing a big piece of work for God and for humanity. He 
did not always succeed. But he always did his best to succeed. 

Mr. Moody’s breadth of view was most stimulating, espe- 
cially in a day when narrowness in methods of work and theo- 
logical belief controlled to so great a degree. He invited to 
his Northfield conferences men like Professor Henry Drum- 
mond and Dr. George Adam Smith, when they were regarded 
as arch-heretics by the conservatives who thought they domi- 
nated this annual conference. He gave the Roman Catholic 
Church in East Northfield a fine organ when their building 
was being erected, for, said he, “if they are going to have 
music, they might better have good music,” and the Catholics 
reciprocated by furnishing enough stone to build the founda- 
tion of the Congregational church, of which Mr. Moody was 
the chief supporter. 

In spite of the opposition of many Church workers in his 
day to the so-called socialized or “institutional church,” Mr. 
Moody spoke most cordially of the social features of the 
Moody Church in Chicago, and one Sunday morning I heard 
him make an earnest plea for five hundred dollars to be used 
for the work of the Boy’s Brigade. 

The simplicity of his message was such that it gripped all 
classes. The first time I ever saw Mr. Moody he was talking 
to a young sister of mine in an inquiry room in a mission 
chapel on the East Side of New York. She was about four- 
teen, and Mr. Moody was quietly explaining to her the religion 
pwhich he had just been preaching from the pulpit. 


i 











252 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


Even during Mr. Moody’s day there came the signs of swift 
change in our social and economic conditions. He frequently 
spoke of the problems of the workingmen. I often wonder 
what the message of Mr. Moody would be in view of the situa- 
tion which now confronts the Church and the Nation. I know 
that the narrower followers of this great man would declare 
at once that, were Mr. Moody here to-day, he would preach 
in just the same old way. I do not believe it. He would apply 
the old Gospel to present conditions. 

Mr. Moody often told the story that the beginning of his 
power came with the realization that God was waiting to find 
a man through whom he might show the world what he could 
do with one who was thoroughly devoted to him. There is 
no doubt that God is waiting for such a man to-day. 

One afternoon I was traveling west from Philadelphia. 
When the conductor came through the car to take up my 
ticket, he said to me, with a considerable show of pride, “John 
Mitchell is in the car forward.”’ We were just passing through 
the mining region of Pennsylvania, where Mitchell, as Presi- 
dent of the Miner’s Union, was worshiped by the coal-diggers. 

I found Mr, Mitchell reading a recent book on economics. 
We talked the rest of the day on many phases of the labor 
question, and I was much impressed with his fairness. Even 
when he spoke of those who so bitterly hated and opposed him, 
Mr. Mitchell did not say an unkind word about them. 

I followed Mr. Mitchell’s career for nearly twenty years, 
meeting him annually at the conventions of the American 
Federation of Labor and becoming very well acquainted with 
him. Always he won the respect of fair-minded men, and his 
host of friends among employers of labor indicated his broad- 
mindedness. Mr. Roosevelt was among those who deeply 
admired him. : 

When Mr. Mitchell died, the story was printed that he had 
left a fortune of a quarter of a million dollars. Some people 
are prone to regard suspiciously the accumulation of wealth 
by any labor leader, and certain venomous charges had been 
publicly made against Mr. Mitchell during his lifetime, which 
I had felt called upon to refute. His secretary, who had been 


SOME OF AMERICA’S BIG MEN) 253 


working with him throughout his entire career, and who had 
kept an accounting of all of Mr. Mitchell’s investments from 
the very beginning, submitted a financial statement to me, 
which showed Mr. Mitchell to have had remarkable business 
ability in making investments and which cleared him of any 
charges of questionable policy. Let it be said, however, that 
so high was the regard of the public in general, even among 
employers of labor, that there was scarcely a suspicious ques- 
tion raised as to how Mr. Mitchell had obtained his money. 

I had many opportunities to meet William Jennings Bryan, 
and in the course of the years we became very good friends. 
He always had my profound admiration because of his un- 
doubted sincerity and integrity. One knew where to find him, 
whether he was right or wrong. He was ever faithful to his 
convictions, and it was his staunchness and sincerity that made 
the American public believe in him, even when they did not 
share his views. 

I recall one occasion when he was among those who should 
have been his warmest friends and admirers. When action 
upon the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution was im- 
minent, about fifty men and women, leaders of national dry 
organizations, came to New York to decide upon a common 
program. There were so many factions and so many antipa- 
thies between them, that it was impossible to agree upon a 
common meeting place. Because of the contention among the 
leaders, it was not until well toward evening that it was finally 
agreed to meet in the parlor of a small hotel, to which place 
the fifty Prohibitionists made their way. Arriving at the 
hotel, nearly an hour was spent in “milling around” because 
the question of the presiding officer had to be settled, and 
again, the unwillingness to give any organization the place of 
preeminence prevented the selection of a chairman. At last 
a group of two or three representatives of the most powerful 
national organizations came to me, asking if I would take the 
chairmanship because, as Wayne B. Wheeler, representing the 
Anti-Saloon League of America, remarked with a smile: 

“You are not tied up with any of the organizations and we 
know that you will give everybody a square deal.” 


254 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


It was then about five o’clock and the conference remained 
in session until nearly ten, without adjourning for dinner. 
Much of my time as chairman was occupied in preserving 
order between the contending forces, and in the course of the 
discussion Mr. Bryan, who had also been invited to attend 
the conference, was mercilessly scored by certain of the 
“brethren” because they said he had come so late into the 
Prohibition fight. Mr. Bryan, it seemed to me, justified his 
record on the Prohibition question. But during that whole 
discussion he smiled at the rapier thrusts made by his friends, 
and outlined without the slightest trace of bitterness what he 
believed should be done to bring about Prohibition as quickly 
and as completely as possible. 

A few days before a mass meeting which I was organizing 
in Louisville, and which was to be held in the huge armory 
on a Sunday afternoon, I became disturbed about the success 
of the occasion because of the terrific heat and many counter- 
attractions. So I telegraphed Mr. Bryan, who was somewhere 
in Michigan or Minnesota, asking him if he would hurry to 
Louisville to speak with me. He promptly wired his accept- 
ance. When afterward I spoke to him about the payment of 
his expenses and fee, he said, very heartily: “That is all right, 
Stelzle. We'll call it square. I had a good time and the peo- 
ple seemed to enjoy it. So just let it pass.” 

During the following summer I traveled with Mr. Bryan 
on a Chautauqua circuit in the Middle West. He spoke in 
the big tent in the afternoon, and I addressed the crowd at © 
night. Each morning we traveled in a day coach to the next 
city on the circuit. I recall that he talked more about the © 
Bible on those trips than of any other subject. : 

It was interesting to behold the manner in which he con- — 
versed with people on those day coaches. His memory of men — 
and events was most remarkable. I saw at least one of the — 
reasons why he had so strong a personal following. He was © 
much like Theodore Roosevelt in that respect. 

I have always regretted that Mr. Bryan allowed himself to 
be persuaded to take the place of leadership in the fight for — 


SOME OF AMERICA’S BIG MEN 255 


the Fundamentalists, because, although he was in many re- 
spects a great Bible-class teacher when he limited himself to 
a popular presentation of practical, ethical teaching, he obvi- 
ously was not a theologian in the larger sense. 

Mr. Bryan frequently remarked to me that in nearly all of 
the political ideas which he advocated he was in advance of 
his time, and that after he had promoted them and spent time 
in educating the public to them, others had received the credit 
for the doctrines he had promoted. He candidly admitted that 
he was not always right, but he believed that the general tend- 
ency of his philosophy was sound in so far as it affected the 
welfare of humanity. 

There is no doubt that Mr. Bryan’s chief value to our coun- 
try was that of a crusader. It may be true that he was not 
a great statesman. But in his capacity as crusader he made 
a more profound impression upon his generation than most 
of the statesmen of his time. 

On Palm Sunday, 1926, I began a series of addresses in 
the First Congregational Church of Washington, D. C., of 
which Dr, Jason Noble Pierce is pastor. My general theme 
was “America at the Crossroads,” and, twice a day for a 
week, I presented to interested audiences various problems that 
confronted our country. 

But for Sunday morning I selected the subject, “If Jesus 
Should Enter Washington To-day.” President Calvin Coolidge 
sat about four seats from the platform, and during the entire 
discussion listened intently as I took up one after another the 
conditions that Jesus would find were he to visit the Capital 
of the United States. I confess that for the first time in many 
years I had “‘stage-fright”’ before I began to speak. 

Strange to say, however, it was not the consciousness of 
the President’s greatness that disturbed me—it was the sense 
of his modesty and simplicity. The church was packed, and 
thousands had been turned away, but Mr. Coolidge seemed 
entirely oblivious of everything but the religious atmosphere 
of the day—the beginning of Holy Week. What added a 
special tenderness to the occasion was the fact that his father 


256 A SON OF THE BOWERY, 


had died during the previous week, and this was the first re- 
ligious service he had since attended—possibly the first public 
function of any kind. 

At the close of the service, the congregation remained 
standing as Dr. Pierce led me to the President’s pew and pre- 
sented me to him and to the guests who had attended the 
service with him. I then walked with the President down 
the aisle and escorted him to his automobile. 

His questions, as we slowly walked to the curb, indicated 
his interest not only in the subjects I had been talking about, 
but in the broader social work in which I was engaged, and 
to which I had casually referred in my address. 


XXI 


ARBITRATING LABOR TROUBLES 


QO NE day a committee of labor leaders representing an In- 

ternational union whose local in New York City had had 
a dispute with an employers’ association, called at my office 
with the request that I serve as arbitrator in the case in ques- 
tion. 

“T am surprised that you should come to me again,”’ I re- 
marked to the committee, “when in practically every case that 
I have thus far arbitrated in your industry I have decided 
against the union. The fact that I am a member of the Ma- 
chinists’ Union has never meant that I would grant special 
favors to workingmen.” 

“That’s all right,” the chairman of the committee said. 
“We know when we are right and when we are wrong, but we 
labor officials can’t tell the boys that they are wrong, because 
they will think that we have been bought up by the bosses and 
that we are double-crossing the union. They know that you 
don’t give a damn, when you arbitrate one of our cases, what 
the bosses or what the union thinks. You always give every- 
body a square deal and the men trust you. In this particular 
case they say they won’t accept anybody but you as arbitrator.” 

After hearing the arguments on both sides in this case, I 
again decided against the union. 

In experiences of this nature covering a dozen years or more 
my decisions have gone against the labor unions about two- 
thirds of the time, although it should be said that in every 
case the arbitrators representing the union side always signed 
the decision which I wrote. This cannot always be said for 
the employers, for in many cases when the decision was in 
favor of the union there was somebody on the employers’ 
side who presented a minority report. However, this was 


merely a matter of record, because as chairman of the arbitra- 
257 


258 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


tion committee in the particular cases which I have handled 
my decision was final. 

Most of the cases which have come under my observation 
and consideration had to do with the printing business in New 
York, no doubt because of my practical experience as a ma- 
chinist in the shops of R. Hoe & Co., the printing-press manu- 
facturers, where I worked for eight years; and the major part 
of these cases were in connection with the mechanical depart- 
ments of the New York newspapers. 

After my first experience in this particular field in which, 
by the way, the decision went against the labor union, Her- 
mann Ridder, publisher of the New York Staats-Zeitung, re- 
marked to me that he was mighty glad to have found an “im- 
partial” arbitrator who actually knew the printing business, 
because, he said, “on a number of occasions we have had deci- 
sions rendered by perfectly honest men whose rulings we, as 
employers, could not accept because they did not give working- 
men a fair deal.’’ He quoted a famous bishop of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church, who went out of his way ordinarily to ex- 
press his sympathy for workingmen, and actually did much in 
New York City to further their cause, but who in an arbitra- 
tion case gave them a decidedly raw deal simply because he 
did not understand the technical aspects of the newspaper 
printing business. 

As a result of the confidence gained through the decisions 
made in a number of cases, I understand that my name ap- 
peared at the top of the lists of suggested arbitrators submitted 
by both the publishers and the unions in a number of impor- 
tant arbitration cases, and so, for some time I served in this 
capacity, not as the representative of any organization that was 
trying to reform somebody, but merely as an individual who — 
was interested in bringing about better relationships between 
employers and employees. 

Some of these cases had been held up for several years be- © 
cause both the publishers and the union were afraid to submit 
them to arbitration on account of the great uncertainty as to — 
how an outsider might regard what was to them a most impor- . 
tant question, for arbitration decisions come to have much the | 


ARBITRATING LABOR TROUBLES 259 


same standing that decisions in courts of law possess—they are 
constantly being quoted by succeeding arbitrators, or in the 
presentation of cases both by employers and employees. Some- 
times the questions considered involved the carrying out of 
definite agreements made several years before, but certain con- 
ditions had changed so decidedly since the agreement was en- 
tered into, that one side seemed to be given undue advantage. 
For example, it had been agreed by the union and the pub- 
lishers that five men should constitute a crew on a “shaving 
machine,” an appliance which shaved the inside of stereotype 
plates used on the cylinders of newspaper presses, and in the 
agreement it was specified just what place each particular man 
of the five was to occupy in his relationship to the running of 
the machine. The place of one of these men was to be at the 
“tail” of the machine, to which the stereotype plate was finally 
delivered after the machine had automatically done its work; 
but in one of the newspaper offices a very ingenious arrange- 
ment had been perfected whereby the tail end of this shaving 
machine was run through a hole cut in the partition which 
separated the stereotype-room from the pressroom, where the 
plate was used. Obviously there was no room for the man as- 
signed to the tail end of the machine to stand. In order to 
function at all, it would have been necessary for him to go into 
the pressroom and there take the plate from the machine, but 
the rules of the pressmen’s union prohibited the member of 
any other union from working within the pressroom, although 
a member of the pressmen’s union was permitted to handle the 
plate as it came through the partition. The stereotyper’s 
union, however, insisted that five men must be employed on the 
machine, and so the fifth man continued to remain as a member 
of the crew, taking his place in the pressroom, but doing ab- 
solutely nothing, although he had drawn his weekly wages for 
two years when the case came to me for arbitration. After 
looking over the situation, and after hearing both sides of 
the case, my decision went against the union, although techni- 
cally they were right in their insistence that the agreement of 
the publishers to employ five members of the stereotyper’s 
union on the shaving machine had been violated. My point 


260 A SON OF THK BOWERY 


was that there were still five men at work on the machine, 
even though the fifth man was a member of the pressmen’s 
union, and that it was absurd to insist upon the enforcement 
of a technicality which severely penalized an employer who was 
trying to maintain great efficiency without reducing either the 
number of workers or the amount paid for running his plant— 
and the union finally agreed with me. Apparently, they were 
afraid of establishing a precedent which might some time in 
the future injure them in the making of a contract concerning 
the number of men who should be employed in operating this 
kind of machine. 

Taken as a whole, it has been my experience that the repre- 
sentatives of the labor unions presented more carefully pre- 
pared briefs than did the employers. 

I recall one instance in which the question of an increase of 
one dollar per day was asked in the wages of the men in a 
union which represented approximately twenty-five hundred 
members. When the question of the cost of living was con- 
sidered, the employers, besides some mere generalities, pre- 
sented simply several sheets of brown paper upon which were 
penciled the prices of food which had been secured in Washing- 
ton Market on the morning of the hearing. The union, on the 
other hand, had very carefully prepared an elaborate statement 
based upon a study made of the rise and fall of prices cover- 
ing a number of years and giving their authorities for the 
statistics employed. The case for the employers had been so 
poorly presented that I insisted upon another hearing in order 
to give them an opportunity to secure more complete figures 
for their side, although the labor representatives of the board 
protested most vehemently against such a proceeding. I in- 
sisted, however, that as an arbitrator I had the right to ask 
for all the facts available, and I felt that I was not in a posi- 
tion to make a decision on so important a case with the material 
which had thus far been given me. The employers rushed a 
couple of men to Washington, who spent a week in getting the 
best figures available, which were then submitted at the next 
hearing of the Arbitration Committee. However, in this case 


ARBITRATING LABOR TROUBLES 261 


the decision went in favor of the union, although the full 
amount asked for was not granted. 

In another instance, a contract between the employers and 
the union had been so loosely drawn that it was capable of 
several different interpretations, and when it came to the de- 
fense of the employers’ side, there was such indifference mani- 
fested as to the importance of these points that I indirectly in- 
timated in the early part of the day that if no better evidence 
could be produced on the side of the employers the decision 
would go to the union. During the luncheon recess the em- 
ployers saw to it that the afternoon session was attended by 
several of the leading lawyers of the city, who had been re- 
tained by their organization to argue the case for them. This 
arbitration resulted in a compromise decision. 

It should be said that in both the cases just described all of 
the material had been gathered together by the workingmen 
themselves or by their elected officials, who had had no legal 
training but were graduates from the shop, although several 
were still working in the shop. In one instance the three men 
who represented the union had worked almost continuously for 
three days and three nights, getting very little sleep, in the 
preparation of their material. 

Since statistics and statistical studies enter so largely into in- 
dustrial matters, the practice during recent years has been for 
the unions to employ agencies or professional statisticians who 
prepare the briefs dealing with the larger economic and statis- 
tical data, and employers, too, are less and less dependent upon 
their own wisdom and sense of superior knowledge of business 
in order to win their cases. They also are employing profes- 
sional economists who give their entire time not only to the 
preparation of special cases, but to the constant study of data 
dealing with this phase of their business, so that both sides are 
better prepared for emergencies, and mainly to lay the founda- 
tions of a better understanding between the two groups. In 
one important industry this plan was inaugurated at my sug- 
gestion, when the employers lost their case because of the crude- 
ness of their contract. 


262 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


One of the most encouraging features in this connection is 
the fact that in recent years the experts employed by one anion 
and those engaged by the employers work jointly to produce 
material upon which there may be based a common agreement, 
thus narrowing down the possibilities for controversy. 

Hot-headedness in an arbitration case usually results in last- 
ing bitterness. However, sometimes a strong personality will 
stand out, having such fine qualities that the mere matter of 
explosiveness on occasion is forgiven, especially if the guilty 
man himself has a sense of humor. 

I recall a prominent newspaper publisher in New York City 
who, in a certain arbitration hearing shook his fist in the faces 
of the three representatives of the union and called them the 
vilest names that he could think of, but the three unionists sim- 
ply continued to puff away at their cigars and smiled at the 
excited representative of the bosses, 

Finally, I quietly remarked: “Mr. Blank, these men do not 
deny that they are what you are calling them—so this is not a 
question for arbitration. Let us go ahead and talk about things 
which will really stir them up and to which you can get a 
comeback.’”? The excited publisher joined heartily in the laugh 
of the crowd. 

“Well,” he said, “they are damned good fellows, anyway,” 
and the trade-unionists came back at him with the same com- 
pliment. The committee then proceeded to its business. 

There was probably no man representing the publishers who 
was more generally admired by the workers than Don Seitz, 
then of the New York World. Characteristically, he gave his 
opinions bluntly, and never minced matters, but he was always 
so eminently fair—sometimes opposing his fellow-members 
of the employers’ group—that he won the respect of every man 
of the opposition. 

It is generally assumed that when one side in a controversy 
is willing to arbitrate and the other is not that the former is 
manifesting the finest spirit and is to be commended for its 
fairness; but it doesn’t necessarily follow that he who is will- 
ing to arbitrate is surest of his grounds. The fact is that fre- 
quently when one side has nothing to lose and everything to 





ARBITRATING LABOR TROUBLES 263 


gain—that is, when it is least sure of its ground—it makes a 
show of fairness by saying that it is willing to submit its case 
to arbitration, with the belief, as is often true, that the arbitra- 
tor will compromise the claims of the two contending parties, 
and thus give the side which really had no case more than it 
is entitled to. | 

There are very few cases which cannot fairly be settled by 
arbitration, assuming that both sides are adequately presented 
and the arbitrator is unprejudiced and has a sufficient knowl- 
edge of the technicalities which may be introduced to permit 
him to give a fair judgment. Often, however, the arbitrator 
may have a clear and definite opinion regarding the technical 
and legal points involved and still bring in a decision which, 
while not absolutely unjust, nevertheless results in bitterness 
or hard feeling, because of the failure to consider the human 
element in the controversy. 

It is often assumed that lawyers or judges make the best 
arbitrators because they possess “the judicial mind,” but the 
trouble is that their tendency is so strongly in favor of the 
absolute observation of the letter of the law that they often 
forget the human side of the question. This, added to their 
lack of knowledge of the business itself, sometimes results in 
decisions from lawyers which are anything but satisfactory to 
the workingmen, who in such cases are usually the greatest 
sufferers. 

The major portion of the international unions throughout 
the country and the American Federation of Labor itself are 
opposed to compulsory arbitration. More and more, however, 
the tendency is toward the compulsory presentation of the facts 
before an arbitration board, and hence to the public, and after 
the arbitration board has made its decision it remains for 
public opinion to enforce it. If public opinion does not co- 
incide with the view of the arbitration board, the side which 
has been discriminated against stands guiltless; but if, on the 
other hand, the offending party refuses to accept the just deci- 
sion of the board, it stands condemned by the public, receiving 
no sympathy from it, with the result that it is soon whipped 
into line. 


264 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


Whether or not an industry can afford to pay increased 
wages does not always depend upon the profits which are being 
made at the time of the demand for the increase. In one of 
the decisions which I rendered in connection with a newspaper 
arbitration I stated: “Whether or not the newspaper is making 
money cannot be the determinating factor in deciding how 
much wages should be paid to its employees. In the first place, 
workingmen should not be penalized because of the publisher’s 
errors of judgment, lack of business enterprise, mistaken edi- 
torial policy, or any other reason which may cause a newspaper 
to fail to produce fair profits. Furthermore, publishers of 
newspapers may see fit to conduct their affairs so that a larger 
future reward will come to them rather than a comparatively 
small immediate return. If a newspaper is conducted at a loss 
in spite of no assurance of future prosperity, then the personal 
desire for continuing such enterprise should not be a sufficient 
reason to request employees to work for less than a living 
wage.” 

It is a question whether any industry which cannot pay a 
living wage has a right to live. 

It is an extremely difficult matter for an arbitrator to base 
his findings upon figures presented regarding what it costs the 
average worker to live, because often there is a variation in fig- 
ures of this kind of from fifty per cent to one hundred per 
cent—depending upon who presents them. 

If the principle of the living wage as submitted by social 
workers and so-called experts were to be applied to industry as 
a whole, it is probable that the total annual income at present 
produced in the United States would not be large enough to 
provide such a wage for every worker, and it is a serious ques- 
tion whether a particular industry should be compelled to pay 
its workers the “living wage’ which may have been submitted 
in a particular controversy, while there are many other in- 
dustries with which it would come into more or less competi- 
tion that pay very much less than this living wage. There is 
endless controversy regarding the living-wage question because 
the value of money changes so frequently. The purchasing 
power of the dollar varies very greatly from time to time. Also 


ARBITRATING LABOR TROUBLES 265 


standards of living are constantly changing. Before the war 
the average American workingman was satisfied if he had 
enough to eat, clothes enough to wear, and a home to live in. 
But to-day, on account of the marked elevation of standards 
of living, he is no longer content with merely making a living 
—he is keenly interested in making a life. Thus it will be seen 
that the “living wage” question will always be subject to ar- 
bitration. 


XXII 


PROMOTION AND PUBLICITY 


Whee things are wrought through publicity than this 
world dreams of. Other elements enter into the success 
of great public enterprises; but organizations and movements 
which require the good will and support of the people for 
their highest success can secure them only through legitimate 
publicity methods. 

The problems of the publicity man are principally those of 
human characteristics and relationships. My experience in the 
social field, together with the surveys of special situations and 
of entire communities which I had been making for many years, 
proved to be invaluable, in qualifying me for publicity work. 

I began to write for the newspapers when I was about 
eighteen, the first article being a “contribution” sent to the 
American Machinist in which I had the audacity to take issue 
with a famous mechanical engineer with regard to some me- 
chanical process. I recall that one of the foremen in the shop 
said if I continued that sort of thing I would get myself into 
trouble, but I remember that he himself lost his job before I 
left the shop. 

While I was still writing for the Labor Press of America, I 
received a letter from the General Counsel of the Newspaper 
Enterprise Association, a syndicate which furnished features 
to several hundred daily newspapers throughout the country, 
wanting to know if I would write a daily editorial for them. 
The managers had seen my work in the labor papers and as 
the publications for which they furnished material consisted 
largely of evening newspapers read by workingmen, they 
thought that that was just the kind of stuff they could use. 

For three years thereafter I wrote every day with the ut- 
most liberty for the N. E. A., mainly on industrial and inspira- 


tional subjects. The articles were only about 300 words in 
266 


PROMOTION AND PUBLICITY ~— 267 


length—although I recall the managing editor telling me that 
if I could put my ideas into seven words he would pay me 
just as much for my work. In this connection he told me the 
story of Rudyard Kipling, who, it appears, during his early 
newspaper experience was one day hanging around the make-up 
table of the newspaper on which he worked, and casually re- 
marked to the make-up man, “I am glad to see that you get 
so many of my stories into the paper.” 

“Yes,” this czar answered, “your stuff is short and helps to 
fill up the holes on the page.”’ 

He also reminded me of the story of a young reporter who 
was told to condense a column of matter which he had written 
to a couple of hundred words. “It can’t be done,” feelingly 
said the reporter; to which the editor retorted: 

“Tt can’t be done? The story of the Crucifixion, the greatest 
tragedy in history, was written in less space than that!” 

Once the managing editor of a certain syndicate asked me 
to “cover” an evangelistic meeting of a nationally known 
preacher and to write only regarding certain phases of the 
meetings. At the end of a week, after I had wired half-a- 
dozen stories, I sent a telegram, saying: 

“May I also write about my personal reactions regarding 
these meetings ?” 

To this the editor replied in substance: 

“No—ninety per cent of the people of this country are nuts, 
and we have got to write for the nuts.” 

For a couple of years I furnished the editorial for the Sun- 
day Edition of the Philadelphia North American, which was 
spread clear across the top of the editorial page, and for a sim- 
ilar period I wrote for the Newark Evening News a daily col- 
umn interpreting the news of the day from the standpoint of 
a sociologist. 

Labor conventions and religious gatherings of national im- 
portance were also covered for syndicates of newspapers and 
usually for the most important local paper of the town in which 
these meetings were held. Serving as an “unofficial” inter- 
preter of such proceedings, I had the utmost freedom in writ- 
ing about the transactions of these bodies. These tasks were, 


268 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


however, taken rather seriously because of my keen interest in 
the activities of the organizations whose meetings I reported, 
and invariably they dealt with subjects with which I was thor- 
oughly familiar. 

In 1903 I wrote my first book, entitled, ““The Workingman 
and Social Problems.” It was a comparatively small book, but 
I shall never forget the thrill that I experienced when upon 
reaching my home one evening, the first copy of the book, with 
its gilt title, was prominently displayed on the mantel of the 
living room. Since then I have written a dozen books on boy’s 
work, publicity, labor, prohibition, and general social conditions 
—some of them fairly pretentious—but I shall never forget 
the first little volume on the workingman which was really a 
narrative of some of my earlier experiences. 

I have been happy in presenting to the American public the 
work of the organizations which I have served as publicity 
counselor, because I accepted only those enterprises into whose 
work I could enter with spirit and enthusiasm. I have never 
- undertaken to do publicity work for commercial organizations. 
As ordinarily I promoted simultaneously half a dozen or more 
campaigns, there was sufficient diversity in the work to keep 
my mind fresh and alert. 

One of the most fascinating publicity campaigns I ever 
conducted was that of the National Reform Association in con- 
nection with its International Christian Citizenship Conference 
at Winona Lake, Indiana, during the early part of July 1923. 
For many months it had been the advertised purpose of the of- 
ficers of the Conference to prepare a message on world peace 
which was to be sent to the rulers of every country. But the 
Conference was coming perilously near to its close, and the 
message had not yet been written. So I took up the subject 
with the steering committee one morning and urged upon them 
the importance of delegating somebody to prepare this message. 

“You have been writing the official statements each morning 
which have gone out to the country through the press. I would 
recommend that you yourself write the message on world 
peace,” half facetiously said the bishop who was the presiding 


PROMOTION AND PUBLICITY _ 269 


officer of the committee. The committee took his remarks seri- 
ously, although I vigorously protested that I was not the man 
to write the document. On the night of July 4, after I had fin- 
ished my day’s work, I tackled the job and wrote and rewrote 
sentence after sentence until at three o’clock.in the morning I 
had finished the statement. When I presented it to the com- 
mittee a few hours later, they unanimously voted to accept it 
as it stood without changing a single word. 

Here are some of the paragraphs in this six-hundred-word 
message : 


“Humanity is staggered by the possibilities of another 
world war. Homes in every land, over which the shadow 
of sacrificial death still hovers, are saddened by the prospect 
of still further heartbreak and suffering. The people in 
these lands have already given millions of their sons in the 
belief that their supreme sacrifice would make the world 
safe for democracy, create a high idealism which would make 
the world a fairer place in which to live and end war for 
all time. 

“None of these hopes has been realized. Men hate each 
other as intensely as ever. Chaos reigns in every human 
relationship. Economic and political conditions have sunk 
to low levels. Nations have been guilty of promoting selfish 
and ignoble loyalties. 

“Efforts have been made to avert the disaster which is 
inevitable if present tendencies continue. Every such method 
for adjusting these difficulties has failed. 

“The time has come to try Christianity. It has never 
failed in any field when given a fair chance. And civiliza- 
tion is entitled to every opportunity to free itself from its 
present predicament. There is an inescapable obligation on 
the part of every nation to make its contribution to consum- 
mate this desired end, even at great sacrifice to itself. 

“The nations of the world must depart from selfish in- 
dividualism and inhuman isolation. They should unite in 
creating new standards which are based upon the teachings 


270 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


of Jesus. He must be acknowledged as the Supreme Arbiter 
in every national and international difficulty. Loyalty to 
Him should be the chief desire of the nations. 

“Tt should be recognized that nations are accountable to 
the same Christian principles as those which pertain to all 
Christian men and women as individuals. There is no 
double standard of morality and ethics—one for men and 
another for nations. There is only one morality, one honor, 
one righteousness. 

“We believe that God’s judgments can be averted only by 
national repentance for sin and by national obedience to the 
laws of love and brotherhood and fair play, as taught by 
Jesus, and that such obedience will bring peace to the world, 
and a restoration of prosperity and happiness to all the 
peoples. 

“We further believe that civil rulers are his ministers as 
certainly as are the rulers of the Church and that these rulers 
are directly and immediately responsible to Him for their 
official conduct. 

“Tt is because nations and rulers have held themselves 
above all moral law, becoming a law unto themselves, as far — 
as their civil lives are concerned, that present-day world con- 
ditions have become so chaotic. 

“We, therefore, an Assembly of 2000 Christian men and 
women, constituting the International Christian Citizenship : 
Conference, unite in asking the rulers of these United States — 
and of the world to join in setting up the Kingdom of God _ 
on earth, acknowledging Jesus Christ Lord of lords and 
King of kings, so that justice and happiness and brotherhood 
and peace may prevail throughout the whole earth.” 


This message was adopted with enthusiasm by the entire 
Conference and was telegraphed to every part of the United 
States, holding first-page position all that day in most of the - 
great metropolitan newspapers. 

The means of sending the message to foreign rulers had not _ 
been determined. I suggested that it be cabled in its entirety © 
to the King of England, frankly with an eye to the publicity 





PROMOTION AND PUBLICITY = 271 


which would thus be obtained. I understood, of course, that 
ordinarily communications are not sent directly to the King. 

When I found that my suggestion was promptly accepted 
by the committee, I ventured to add that if the document were 
sent as a week-end message, the cost would be only about one- 
fourth of the regular cablegram rates, and that it might be 
a stunning thing to cable the message to every ruler whose 
country might be reached. This was enthusiastically done. 
Shortly afterward the text was put into the form of an elegant 
four-page document, and sent to the eighty-three kings and 
rulers of the world. Many of them responded through their 
representatives, expressing deep appreciation of the sentiments 
contained in the pronouncements. 

During the war Ivy L. Lee, who was director of publicity 
for the American Red Cross, asked me to call at his office in 
New York to discuss candidates to head two important depart- 
ments which were to be organized in the Red Cross office at 
Washington, one having to do with the churches of all denom- 
inations in America, and the other for the purpose of appealing 
to the workingmen of the United States. After we had dis- 
cussed possible directors for about half an hour, he said sud- 
denly: ‘““Why don’t you take both jobs? You can’t do any- 
thing bigger than head these departments and really make a 
success of them because you will be dealing with the two 
greatest classes in this country.” , 

I hesitated. Whereupon Mr. Lee urged me to come down to 
Washington and look over the work which the Red Cross was 
doing. A few days later I appeared at the Red Cross Building, 
and Mr. Lee, without any further argument, led me to an office 
and said, ““Here’s where we are going to put you, so hang up 
your hat and take off your coat and get busy on the job.” 

I was not prepared for this sudden “call to service’; but I 
followed Mr. Lee’s instructions and remained in Washington 
until the end of the war, promoting night and day to the best 
of my ability the big job which had been assigned to me. 
With the utmost liberty to proceed in arousing church members 
and workingmen to a sense of their responsibility, I evolved 
a multitude of methods and sent out numerous messages 


272 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


through the religious press and the daily newspapers. The 
church organizations and the labor unions were glad to enlist 
in promoting my plans. 

At one stage during the Red Cross campaign organized labor 
throughout the United States became very indignant at the Red 
Cross officials because they permitted the official organ to be 
printed in the plant of a concern which bitterly fought the 
unions. The various craftsmen identified with printing de- 
cided to boycott not only the periodical but the Red Cross itself. 

When this information was brought to me, I made the re- 
quest that I should be permitted to confer with the national 
presidents and secretaries of the organizations involved. To 
the group which met in Washington I pointed out the disas- 
trous effects such action would have upon the Red Cross 
Christmas campaign for membership, and also that the reaction 
against the labor unions of the country for halting the activities 
of the Red Cross during the war would very seriously affect 
the standing of organized labor in the mind of the public. Fi- 
‘nally, I persuaded the group to meet with the council of Red 
Cross officials, as a result of which meeting the proposed boy- 
cott was never inaugurated. 

In the midst of the national fight for Prohibition I or- 
ganized the “Strengthen America Campaign,” the object of 
which was to raise a fund of approximately $1,000,000 to buy 


space in daily newspapers to help put across the Eighteenth — 
Amendment to the Constitution. The money was to be raised — 
by local committees and used by them in their home-town news- ~ 
papers. Hundreds of daily and weekly newspapers printed the — 
sixty different pieces of advertising material which I prepared. — 


The labor press of the country used page advertisements and 
printed special articles at various stages of the campaign. A 
set of a dozen posters printed in colors was widely displayed. 
Thirty leaflets especially for workingmen were ordered from 
the printer by the million, Full-page advertisements appeared 
simultaneously in the Saturday Evening Post, the Literary 


Digest, the Independence and The Outlook. Big prohibition | 


mass meetings followed by open forum discussions were held 
in various parts of the country, three of them in connection 








PROMOTION AND PUBLICITY 278 


with the conventions of the American Federation of Labor in 
San Francisco, Baltimore, and Buffalo. 

A monthly newspaper called The Worker was edited par- 
ticularly for workingmen and had a wide circulation through- 
out the entire country. In a three-hundred-page book entitled 
“Why Prohibition?” was published the result of my two years’ 
study of the economic phases of the liquor problem. Many 
magazine articles were printed. A motion-picture film was 
made and exhibited at strategic points. 

Much of the material employed in the “Strengthen America 
Campaign’’ was sent to several foreign countries which were 
engaged in temperance and prohibition propaganda. 

Governor Willis of Ohio, meeting me in Washington one 
day, said that in his travels throughout the State he carried 
with him two books; one was the Bible, and the other was my 
book “Why Prohibition?” One of the leading jurists of Ken- 
tucky, who was seated next to me at a banquet in Louisville, 
at which I was to speak, but not having caught my name when 
we were introduced, told me of an experience which he had 
while making some prohibition addresses throughout the state 
with two or three other lawyers. 

“Each night I presented a new set of facts to my audiences, 
to the amazement of the lawyers who sat on the platform with 
me, and who spoke at the same meetings. They were very 
curious to know where I had gathered together this mass of 
material, but I was slow to tell them because I did not want 
them to steal my thunder,” he said to me. 

“The fact is, I got my dope from a book called ‘Why Pro- 
hibition?’,’’ he continued. “I think that that is one of the best 
books ever written.” 

The man who sat next to the Judge was convulsed with 
laughter as the Judge continued to speak so enthusiastically 
of my book, and finally turning to him, he said: 

“The man who wrote that book is seated at your side, 
Judge.” 

The Judge turned to me in great surprise and he said, ‘Are 
you Charles Stelzler’ I admitted it. Arising with great dig- 
nity, he bowed in true Southern fashion and said, “Please, sir, 


27 4 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


let me take your hand again. I think that your contribution 
in the form of that book has done more to bring about prohibi- 
tion than anything that was ever printed.” 

It was of great interest to find reported in the daily news- 
papers and in the Congressional Record whole sections of 
“Why Prohibition?” quoted as original material by members 
of Congress, which, of course, was perfectly all right, because it 
was with the hope that the material might thus be used that 
the book had been sent to every member of Congress. 

One of my most worth-while campaigns was to help the 
Women’s Trade Union League of New York City to raise 
enough money to buy a building of its own. “Shall thousands 
of our working-girls continue to use back rooms of saloons, 
rented dirty parlors, or noisy street corners for their get- 
together affairs?” was the title of a folder prepared for the 
League. The most active promoter of this campaign was Mrs. 
Willard Straight—now Mrs. Leonard K. Elmhirst, who, as 
chairman of the Campaign Committee, not only herself con- 
tributed liberally, but worked indefatigably for weeks, per- 
sonally soliciting funds. 

There were in New York City in 1920, 691,720 women who 
were “gainfully employed.” The great majority of these 
women were eligible to become members of the Women’s 
Trade Union League. The difficulty of finding a suitable meet- 
ing place for working women was even greater than was the 
case with workingmen. Most of the social functions of the 
organized working women were held in the upper story of a 
downtown hall which had very meager facilities. However, a 
very small percentage of the women could be cared for in this 
hall, so that they scattered into smaller groups in some of 
the meanest places in town. Unfortunately, in their effort to 
improve themselves, the organized women workers received 
very little encouragement from the men. It is true that the 
labor union demands “Equal pay for men and women for equal 
work.” They make this demand, not so much because they 
are interested in having women receive as much money as they 
receive, but because they fear that unless the women do receive 
as much money, they will themselves be crowded out of an 


——— 








PROMOTION AND PUBLICITY = 275 


industry in which they both happen to be engaged. It thus 
comes to pass that working women are compelled to pretty 
much shift for themselves. The Women’s Trade Union 
League has been making a strenuous fight championing their 
rights, and so far as it has been able, to provide such educa- 
tional and social facilities as to enrich the lives of many of 
those who have been severely handicapped because of their 
small opportunities. 

Workingmen in America are seeking to-day something more 

than a full pay-envelope. They want fuller and richer person- 
alities. They are seeking, not only a living, but a life. During 
the past half dozen years this cultural yearning on the part of 
the workers has found expression in the Workers’ Education 
Movement. Groups of workers have come together all over 
this country for the voluntary study of subjects ranging from 
economics to art, from philosophy to science, in study groups, 
resident colleges, summer schools, Chautauquas, and Labor In- 
stitutes. No less than 35,000 adult workers have been en- 
rolled in such classes, and more than 300,000 trade unionists 
_ have been provided with illustrated lectures in union halls and 
addresses and debates on industrial subjects. 
The Workers’ Education Bureau, which is conducting this 
_ work in America, invited me to make a study of the entire field 
in which it was operating, and to make recommendations for 
its promotion and support. I felt very keenly that few enter- 
| prises were of greater importance than one which broadened 
_ the vision and action of the American workingmen, because if 
| democracy is to endure it must be an educated democracy. It 
is true that knowledge has increased among workingmen, but 
_ real understanding has not kept the same pace. 

One of the most important developments of the Bureau was 
a ““Worker’s Bookshelf.”’ In the general preface to each of its 
volumes is printed the following paragraph: “The Worker’s 
Bookshelf will contain no volumes on trade training nor books 
which give short cuts to material success. The reasons which 
will finally govern the selection of titles for the Workers’ Book- 
shelf will be because they enrich life, because they illumine 
human experience, and because they deepen men’s understand- 


276 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


ing.’ The Bureau is the result of the wholly unselfish efforts 
of Spencer Miller, Jr., who has succeeded in enlisting the sup- 
port of the American Federation of Labor, whose affiliated 
bodies are pledged to responsibility for at least half its finan- 
cial support. 

When this country celebrated the Tercentenary of the land- 
ing of the Pilgrims, the American Bible Society observed 
“Mayflower Universal Bible Sunday’? on November 28th, 
1920, the object being to have the ministers throughout the 
United States preach on “The Pilgrims and the Bible’ on 
this occasion, and to promote the use of the Bible in as many 
ways as possible. I was requested by the Society to prepare 
literature for this celebration. When I called on the Secretary 
of the Society to ask him if he had any material which might 
serve as the basis of what I was to prepare, without a smile 
he handed me a copy of the English Bible. 

“That is fine; this gives me a very good beginning,” I said, 
and he did not hear from me again until about a month later 
when I placed on his desk copy for a complete program for 
the observance of the day, which included a specially drawn 
poster for the cover page with the title “In the Name of God, 
Amen!” This was followed by the Mayflower Compact, the 
story of the Pilgrims, the principles that governed the Pil- 
grims, an article describing conditions in this country three 
hundred years after the Mayflower landing, a chapter on the 
Bible and the Pilgrims, a story of how the Bible is distributed 
in this and other countries, concrete suggestions for the ob- 
servation of “Mayflower Universal Bible Sunday,” and the 
reproduction of the covenant of the First Church of Christ in 
Plymouth, 

In addition to this material, I prepared a tiny booklet en- 
titled, “A Little Journey to Plymouth—Where the Mayflower 
Landed.” This task involved several visits to Plymouth, 
where a study was made of materials found in the local 
museum and in other institutions in Plymouth; the reading of 


every book that I could find dealing with the Pilgrims, a study | 


of the work of the American Bible Society, and the working 





PROMOTION AND PUBLICITY = 277 


out of a complete program for the observance of the day by 
various organizations which would be likely to be interested. 

During the days of my childhood there was a very strong 
prejudice among the poor in the tenements against the hos- 
pitals. It was even with great reluctance that they went to the 
free dispensaries. This prejudice was due to a belief that in 
the hospital they were given the “black bottle,’ supposed to 
contain a drug which would kill them so their bodies might 
be used for laboratory purposes. Thus many children were 
allowed to die lacking proper medical care. 

Now the death rate of infants in New York City is usually 
the lowest among the ten largest cities in the United States 
and the lowest among the great cities of the world. Many 
causes enter into the saving of the lives of children: control 
over contagious diseases, the supply of pure milk, municipal 
sanitation, control over respiratory diseases, control of congen- 
ital diseases, the development of more careful nursing science, 
and the work of the visiting nurse. 

For three years I directed the publicity and promotional 
work of the Visiting Nurse Service which is administered by 
the Henry Street Settlement, and which was organized about 
thirty years ago by Miss Lillian D. Wald. During these three 
years approximately two hundred and fifty nurses made 400,- 


000 visits a year to about 42,000 patients. The value of the 


maternity work done by these nurses may be measured by the 
fact that the death rate among the mothers they attended was 
only one-half that of similar cases in the city as a whole. 
When it is remembered that ninety per cent of New York’s 


_-sick are sick at home, the value of the visiting nurse is readily 


apparent. 

Three years were also spent with the New York Association 
for Improving the Condition of the Poor, whose annual budget 
is over $1,000,000, and which is probably the largest relief 
agency in this country. 

I have known few men in the philanthropic field who took 
their task more seriously and who showed greater compassion 
for the problems of the poor than William H. Matthews, who 


278 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


was the head of the Relief Department of the A. I. C. P. He 
was thoroughly human and sympathetic. 

One day a visitor reported to him concerning a case to which 
she had been assigned. With obvious glee she said that the 
woman was altogether unworthy. 

“You seem to be glad that she was a fraud,” indignantly 
retorted Mr. Matthews. “I think I should feel sorry if I were 
you,” he added. 

In spite of a great multitude of details on his shoulders, this 
unusual “social worker”—how he hated to be called by this 
name—personally visited many of the families, whom he might 
easily have assigned to his corps of fifty odd assistants. 

About the same time that Miss Wald startled New York by 
her revelations of life on the East Side, another pioneer in so- 
cial settlement work, Dr. John L. Elliott, secured his “baptism 
of fire” on the untried West Side and founded Hudson Guild 
on the fringe of “Hell’s Kitchen,” which for many years was 
a sore spot in New York City. There in the reeking tenements 
amid the docks and railroad yards, warehouses and slaughter 
houses, the Guild, setting out to lift up the people of the com- 
munity to a higher plane of living and thinking and to secure 
communal effort in a district of heterogeneous nationalities, has 
stood out like a beacon light. I have been helping Dr. Elliott 
promote this work for several years. Dr. Elliott, who is also 
an Ethical Culture leader, has always upheld the principle of 
the “uncommon fineness in the common man,” and believes, 
not in the charity which hands out doles in Lady Bountiful 
fashion, but which sets out to teach the people it wishes to 
help, to help themselves and in turn to aid others. While 
social settlements as a whole are supposed to stand for democ- 
racy in their various relationships, there is probably none 
which has worked out this principle so definitely and practically 
as Hudson Guild. And it is in working with such leaders in 
the life of America and helping make known the work that is 
being done by these welfare, civic and educational agencies that 
one feels that one’s own work is richly rewarded and distinctly 
worth while. 


PROMOTION AND PUBLICITY = 279 


These paragraphs by no means tell the whole story of ten 
years of publicity effort, but merely cite typical organizations 
throughout the country for whose work there has been a cry- 
ing need, and whose own work and needs I have had the privi- 
lege of presenting to the American public. 


XXIII 


CHILDREN OF THE CITY 


HE city is the modern miracle. It is like a ‘“Pandora’s 
Box’’—with its traditional mixture of good and evil. 
Some believe that it is an evil genie spreading its baneful in- 
fluence over the entire country, bringing ruin and disaster 
wherever it touches. In any event, there it is—splendid, power- 
ful, dominant. The city has come to stay. The forces respon- 
sible for its growth march on with inexorable law as their basis. 
While the city is a world phenomenon—many of the largest 
cities of Europe having grown faster than most of the cities 
of America—the growth of the cities of the United States is 
most remarkable because of their number and the conditions 
under which they have developed. 

In 1800 there were only six cities in the United States hav- 
ing a population of 8000 and over, but in 1920 there were 924 
such cities. In 1800 only 4 per cent of the population lived in 
cities of this size, whereas, in 1920 nearly 44 per cent lived 
in such cities, although in 1920 52.4 per cent of the population 
of the United States lived in cities of 2500 inhabitants or more. 
Almost 10 per cent of the population of the United States lives 
in the three cities of New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia. 
More than one-half of the population of New York State lives 
in New York City. New York City has a population which 
equals that of 13 sovereign states. Certain portions of it are 
so densely populated that if the entire city were equally 
crowded, it would contain all the people living in the United 
States, all those living in Canada, and all those in London, 
Berlin, Paris and Tokio. 

Unquestionably the cities of America present many very 
perplexing problems—housing, transportation, food supply, 
health, sanitation, industry, immigration, moral conditions, and 


so one might go on—but concretely, there are few problems 
280 


CHILDREN OF THE CITY 281 


of greater importance than that of the city’s children. There 
is no doubt that those who are active in work in behalf of 
children occupy the most important field in this country. This 
must be obvious to every student of our national life. .From 
time to time I have made independent studies and investiga- 
tions in the social and economic field. Many of these investiga- 
tions had to do with the welfare of children. 

In one of these studies I found that during recent years 
there has been a very decided tendency toward juvenile delin- 
quency, which, however, is not always shown by general statis- 
tical reports, nor proven by figures on crimes and arrests. 

According to the Police Court judges, the young people who 
appear before them are often hardened criminals before they 
are twenty. The public school authorities in New York City 
have openly admitted that their curriculum did not include 
direct training in character. A judge with large experience 
with criminals has said, “Gunmen, thugs and bootleggers are 
not made ina day. They are the product of homes where lax- 
ity and indifference reign. The criminals of to-morrow are 
in our homes and schools and on our streets to-day—impres- 
sionable, eager to learn, and looking for a hero to worship and 
a gang to join.” 

Statistics for the leading countries of the world indicate 
that the United States is “the most lawless nation on earth.” 
A special Committee on Law Enforcement of the American 
Bar Association reported in 1923 that 9500 persons were killed 
in crimes of violence in the United States during the preceding 
year, and that during the preceding ten years no less than 
85,000 persons perished by poison, pistol or knife or other un- 
lawful and deadly means. Commenting on this situation, the 
New York Times said editorially: 


“This means that every year more than four times the 
number of people lose their lives at the hands of criminals 
in this country than were killed in the Battle of Gettysburg, 
and that every 514 years more people are killed in the every- 
day witks of life in the United States through crime than 
were killed in the American ranks during the World War.” 


282 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


Robbery is 36 times as prevalent in New York as it is in 
London. In Chicago it is 100 times as prevalent as in London. 
There is no doubt that if the amount of this lawlessness is to 
be decreased, special attention must be given to the children 
of our country. Whatever may be the immediate cause of 
the tendency toward criminality and recklessness among young 
people, it is obvious that there is a serious and fundamental 
lack of character among them and that very few have had any 
direct moral training. 

Another serious phase of the child problem in this country is 
its industrial aspects; in other words, the question of child 
labor. Most of us are deluded by the statement that it is a good 
thing for all children to go to work—but there is a vital dif- 
ference between child labor and children’s work. The first may 
easily destroy child life, whereas the second may enrich it. It 
is generally supposed that the street experiences of the newsboy 
make him bright and clever, but the fact is that all street trades 
hold more perils for children than ever before, because the 
streets themselves are filled with greater danger, and the ir- 
regularity of the hours, the night work, the weather, the traffic, 
the glamor of the crowd and lights, and the general reckless- 
ness of life and morals which dominate the city, produce ar- 
tificiality, delinquency, and mental incapacity for permanent 
work, 

The real curse of child labor is not in the fact that children 
are compelled to work; even a child of eight may perform a 
certain routine of duties without serious injury. It is the con- 
tinuous toil for long hours under unsanitary conditions with 


improper and insufficient food that stunts the body and the — 


mind so that when the child arrives at the years when it should 
be giving expression to its best self, it is simply impossible for 
it to appreciate the real values of life. The pathetic part of the 
whole thing is that there comes no realization to the child of 


a be 


that which is missing. Life has lost its largest and fullest © 


meaning. It is limited to the routine of getting a living. 
According to the Census Bureau’s report for 1923, there 

were over 200,000 children in various institutions throughout 

the United States on a particular day when the census was 


CHILDREN OF THE CITY 283 


taken. Altogether, there are more than one-quarter of a mil- 
lion children who are dependent upon private or public benev- 
olence at any one time, and about 500,000 dependent children 
are cared for during the course of the year. Of course, ina 
sense all children are dependent, the majority of them on their 
own parents, but some, unfortunately, on strangers and soci- 
ety. If it could be made perfectly plain that so-called ““depend- 
ent children” are not at all different from other children in 
their personal needs, it would help clarify the situation. 

In former days it was the practice to assign all dependent 
children to orphan asylums regardless of their requirements. 
To-day there is a very definite movement on foot to abolish 
all orphan asylums and to place dependent children in foster 
homes or to have the State or a private agency furnish 
“‘widow’s pensions” so that the child may be kept in the home. 
However, the indiscriminate placing of children in foster 
homes is just as vicious as the indiscriminate herding of boys 
and girls in child-caring institutions. There are some foster 
parents whose sole purpose in opening their homes to unfortu- 
nate children is to procure the services of a household drudge 
at the lowest possible expense, just as there are some institu- 
tions in which all the tedious toil from floor-scrubbing to 
laundering is still being done by hands that should be busy with 
baseballs and dolls. The human element in caring for children 
is far more important than any other consideration, and service 
by trained, devoted persons is more essential than external con- 
ditions in the family home or in the institution. Big buildings 
and elaborate organizations and spotless equipment cannot of 
themselves satisfy the heart needs of the growing child. Un- 
fortunately, many institutions and agencies for children, while 
having on their Board of Directors high-grade men and 
women, are actually operated, in part at least, by low-grade em- 
ployees who have no special fitness or training in the care of 
children. 

It is beginning to dawn upon many of us that however bad 
a child may be, it is not fair to put him into an institution 
until pains have been taken to know him and find out what a 
carefully selected home can do for him. A correctional. in- 


284 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


stitution should be thought of as the last resort in trying to 
make a good citizen out of an under-privileged, dependent or 
delinquent child. It has been found that the great majority 
of criminals in our penitentiaries have been inmates of juvenile 
correctional institutions or reformatories, many of whom could 
have been saved in their own or other homes and given better 
care than they received during the years which they passed in 
these institutions. That great numbers of the inmates of our 
penitentiaries have previously been in such juvenile institutions 
is a challenge to our current method of dealing with juvenile 
offenders. It is quite apparent that if we fail to give dependent 
children our best in their childhood, they will give us their 
worst in their manhood. 

There is perhaps no greater heart appeal than that of the 
sick little child. What is merely discomfort to grown people 
often means death to him. The mustiness of dark, inside bed- 
rooms and the fetid odor of the streets where the tenement 
poor are compelled to spend the nights are responsible for sad, 
hollow-eyed children who cannot understand why they are 
caused so much unhappiness. Heartbroken mothers then know 
a woman’s greatest anguish—to look on helplessly while their 
little children wilt and die. They haven’t much of a chance 
when they live so closely packed together—often three and four 
children sleeping in a squalid bed in the tenement which they 
call their home. 

This is particularly true during the summer season in our 
great cities. Familiar as I have been with the life of the poor 
in the tenements in New York, I have never been able to ac- 
custom myself to the pitiful sights in New York tenement dis- 
tricts in August. This is the harvest season for death’s reaper. 
He stalks through streets and alley-ways and climbs the long 
stairs to reach his victims in the dark rooms into which the 
light of life has never found its way. Stagnant air, choking 
humidity and overpowering smells, sickness, poverty and hope- 
lessness—and many other things that one cannot even mention 


—are the causes of great discomfort and unhappiness. Hordes — 


of wilted people swarm the streets and jostle each other on the 
packed sidewalks. Mothers patiently fan fretful, ailing babies 


: 


CHILDREN OF THE CITY 285 


through the long hot evenings. Restless, wan little children 
droop on doorsteps and in dark hallways because it is too hot 
to play. Pavements glare in the brazen heat and a sticky fog 
hangs over the city while the sun-baked tenements stifle help- 
less little children. 

On any hot summer night it would appear that the entire 
population had been driven from its stifling rooms. Fortu- 
nately, as many as can do so seek relief on the high roofs 
of their tenement homes, although often at the peril of falling 
into the street below. Mothers with little babies on their laps 
are lined up on the sidewalks seated on boxes, benches and 
chairs—rows upon rows of them, as many rows as the side- 
walks will hold. Garbage cans are filled to the top with reek- 
ing vegetables and other refuse from tenement kitchens, while 
little children are compelled to play in the stench and filth. 
Peddlers may be seen selling new mattresses which are piled 
high on their wagons and their customers buy them because 
their old ones are filled with vermin which the summer always 
breeds, in spite of all that the most industrious tenement house- 
wife may do. Meanwhile bonfires are devouring the discarded 
mattresses. 

After heavy rains, gutters are filled with water from over- 
flowing sewers, furnishing bathing facilities for small boys. 
Among the many tragic things in these tenements is that of 
young girls who are making a brave fight for life and every- 
thing else that is sacred—like beautiful flowers growing out of 
the stench and the mire. 

_ Countless children in New York’s tenements know nothing 
of growing things beyond the stunted, trodden grass of ugly 
city squares, or struggling plants on sunless window sills. Yet 
a knowledge of the country should be a part of the memory- 
heritage of every child—they should see the summer clothe it- 
self in green; they should see planting and harvesting; they 
should learn the secrets of the woods. A tenement child who 
lacks these things is robbed of much that enriches life. 

_ The “fresh air” work done by welfare organizations in New 
York City has signed the life warrants of thousands of little 
children every summer. Among the more prominent organ- 











286 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


izations carrying on such work is the New York Association 
for Improving the Condition of the Poor, whose publicity I 
handled, as already noted. 

About 7,000 children were sent to the country by the A. I. 
C. P. each summer, the cost being approximately one dollar 
per day for a child or its mother. Five fresh air homes were 
conducted by the Association where good food, tonic air, spot- 
less beds, fragrant flowers, the smell of the woods and the 
tang of the sea, worked wonders during the two weeks spent in 
these homes by the average child. Of the million dollars an- 
nually spent for its relief work of every kind, about one-tenth 
was used by the Association for its fresh air work. 

The daughters of the poor in our large cities are peculiarly 
tempted, although be it said to their credit that they are as a 
class as strong and womanly as those who move in-the so- 
called higher life of society, even though their manners and 
their language may sometimes seem rather rough and crude. 
I think of Maggie, a rather pretty child, of seventeen, who, 
like most East Side girls, was fond of society and dress. I 
never saw her at home when her hair was not done up in curl 
papers. One day I heard that Maggie had been married. She 
had known her husband two weeks and their honeymoon lasted 
just two days because a detective came to the house, saying 
that her husband was wanted for forging a check. I have al- 
ways believed that he was a sham detective and that her hus- 
band was a scoundrel. When I called the next day to find out 
if anything had been heard regarding her husband, the young 
bride said to me: “When I look back at my young days (she 
was seventeen) and think of the fun I used to have, I am 
sorry I ever got married, but my mother said that I had better 
marry him because he looked like a gentleman and that I might 
get some one who would beat me just like my father used to 
beat her. 

“Oh, but I got a lot of presents,’’ she went on. “Here is a 
lemonade set and a coffee pot, and I got these tin dishes from 
my grandmother. My husband bought these six chairs and 
looking glass on the installment plan, but I suppose they will 
be taken away now because I cannot pay for them. But I don’t 


CHILDREN OF THE CITY 287 


like these chairs—they are too dark anyway; don’t you think 
so?” . 

And yet there wasn’t anything particularly wrong with 
Maggie; she simply did not have a fair chance, There was no 
normal outlet for her natural desire to see more of life than 
was possible in the wretched tenement in which she lived. 

A recent study made in eight cities of 23,000 children under 
one year of age, by the Children’s Bureau of the United States 
Department of Labor, for the purpose of discovering the cause 
of infant mortality, showed that there was a marked influence 
on death rates by the amount of wages earned by the bread- 
winner of the family. The report states that “for infants 
whose fathers earned less than $450 the death rate was 166.9, 
as compared with only 59.1 for those whose fathers earned 
$1250, or over. The group of babies whose fathers were 
classified as having no earnings had the highest rate of all, 
2LO.0; 

Following are the death rates per thousand of children under 
one year of age in the eight cities studied, according to the 
wages earned by their fathers: 


Earnings of Father Death Rate 
RIT CEL URAC CH meeraMiny Muench annie RN AMEN) 166.9 
fe ALO e ries ta) 0b) Rh an le ee 125.6 
ROO ATG DOAK INA Aur Sane Phen se ia Aye 116.6 
TUDO ST 5 8 An aI OSE 107.5 
mesuton Slicuieny Warde. eek ih See Nib ayia 82.8 
Epil hc ciTacliprct ahs Aiea sae CE ONO Cyiays it 59.1 
PMC UTNE EEN OAT ty RT Hal 0) 210.9 


_ From these figures it will be observed that a child whose 
father earned $1250 and over has three times the chance to 
live as compared with a child whose father earned less than 
$450. It shows that there is a distinct relation between wages 
and child life, that poverty is an important factor in determin- 
ing death rates. 

_. Another important point brought out in this study by the 
Children’s Bureau was that the mortality rate for infants whose 


288 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


mothers had worked away from home during pregnancy was 
176.1 per thousand as compared with 114.6 for those whose 
mothers had worked at home, and with 98 for those whose 
mothers had not been gainfully employed. This excess mor- 
tality was especially great among the babies whose mothers had 
no intervals, or only short intervals, of rest from work before 
confinement. The infant death rate in families which lived 
in homes with two or more persons per room was two and one- 
half times that in families which lived in homes with less than 
one person per room, showing the effects of overcrowding. 

To meet the problems enumerated and many others which 
might be elaborated, I conducted publicity and promotional 
campaigns for various children’s organizations in the United 
States, setting up programs which they were to carry out, and 
helping them to present the major facts to the public and to 
raise money for carrying on their work. 

The Knighthood of Youth was organized by the National 
Child Welfare Association and was promoted to meet the 
growing juvenile delinquency in the United States. It was 
felt by the promoters of the Knighthood of Youth that children 
could not be taught in the abstract or by mere preaching or 
nagging—which was the method adopted in the average home. 
Children learn by doing—they like to play at something. They 
find inspiration in working for a record and receiving recogni- 
tion and marks of honor for work well done. 

The Knighthood of Youth, of which Dr. John H. Finley, 
associate editor of the New York Times, was the president, was 
organized upon the basis of a modern crusade for boys and 
girls with character as its quest, and to dramatize what are or- 
dinarily irksome tasks by putting romance into otherwise dis- 
tasteful performance of duty. Deeds of knightly valor were — 
no longer to be confined for America’s young to the legends | 
which had come down through generations of grown folk—_ 
they were to be given the chance to perform their own deeds of | 
chivalry and conquest, but instead of spending time trying to. 
rescue helpless maidens from impossible situations as did the 
knights of old “when barons held their sway,” the youthful 





CHILDREN OF THE CITY 289 


knight was first to conquer himself and then to proceed to 

perform deeds which would have as their basis honesty, friend- 

liness, kindness to animals, courage, justice, purity, helpfulness, 
thrift, loyalty, and the practice of the Golden Rule. Daily rec- 
ords were to be kept of specific deeds done and “‘score cards” 
were furnished upon which these records were kept. 

Another organization in the interest of children whose work 

I promoted was the Child Welfare League of America, which 

is a voluntary association of over 125 public welfare depart- 

ments and private agencies and institutions caring for and 
placing children, which were organized to help meet the needs 
of the one-half million dependent children in this country who 
annually must be cared for in public institutions and private 
homes. | 

I worked out for the League the following creed, which de- 
fines its aims and methods: 

“tT. We believe in saving the home in order to save the child. 

2. We believe in care and training for every child accord- 
ing to his need—in his own home, in a foster home, or 
in an institution. 

3. We believe in the beneficent influence of the family 
home for delinquent children, under intelligent and sym- 
pathetic care and supervision. 

4. We believe that service by trained, devoted persons is 
more essential than external conditions in the family 
home or in an institution. 

5. We believe that all projects in behalf of children should 
be based on knowledge and experience, and on recog- 
nized standards of child welfare work. 

6. We believe in an infant and maternal welfare program 
which safeguards mother and child in the prenatal and 
post-natal period. 

7. We believe in systematic health work with the individ- 
ual through childhood and adult life. 

8. We believe in the study of the mental life of the child 
in order to understand behavior and develop character. 


290 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


9. We believe in a school system that recognizes its social 
responsibilities for the better adjustment of the child in 
home and in school. 

10. We believe in a system of group activities for super- 
vised play and for character-training. 

11. We believe in raising the standards of parental responsi- 
bility—through the education of parents in the care of 
their children, and, in cases of improper guardianship, 
or flagrant neglect in the home, through legal action. 

12. We believe in State programs of child welfare, in which 
the services of public and private organizations shall be 
harmonized and codrdinated to deal with prenatal and 
post-natal care, pre-school and school care, recreational, 
educational, and vocational guidance, the building up 
of character and health, special care for dependent, de- 
linquent, and defective children, and to provide super- — 
vision of the work of private child-caring organiza- — 
tions.” 


One of the worst influences in some institutions is the name — 
which some sincere souls have fastened upon them. Here are | 
a few examples: ‘Home for Erring Females,’ “Society for | 
Penitent Females,’ “Home for Destitute and Orphan Chil- — 
dren,’ “Institution of Mercy,” “Foundling Asylum.” Such 
titles may be descriptive, but they are not very conducive to the 
self-respect of people so classified, either during childhood or 
at maturity, particularly the latter. They may be useful for 
publicity purposes, but they are degrading to their “inmates.” 
It is just as easy to select names which develop friendliness, and 
which are remembered with esteem and affection. 

The National Child Labor Committee, for which I con-— 
ducted an emergency campaign, had for many years been mak- 
ing a most heroic fight for children who work. The public 
for the most part knows the work of the Committee only in 
connection with its attempts to secure Constitutional Amend- 
ments and other spectacular proceedings, but the chief task of 
the Committee has been to remove the original causes of the 
hurts to children in industry. Studies of the child problem 





CHILDREN OF THE CITY 291 


are made by a technically trained group of men and women, 
each expert in his own field. These workers not only study 
conditions, but investigate the methods and laws which are 
being depended upon to remove bad conditions. 

The doctor on the staff covers the state health machinery; 
the educational expert studies school laws and administration; 
the recreational expert looks into the organized opportunities 
for the play-life of children; the agricultural expert be- 
comes familiar with the chances offered the child on the farm 
to develop mentally, socially and economically, especially as 
compared with the opportunity furnished the city child; the 
child labor expert investigates conditions among children en- 
gaged in industrial occupations of every kind and the chances 
they have to develop normally; the juvenile court expert re- 
ports on such matters as standards, jurisdiction, procedure, and 
cooperating agencies in the treatment of delinquent children; 
the staff lawyer draws up a summary of laws and their enforce- 
ment, and makes recommendations for new laws when neces- 
sary. 

When this group of experts comes into a community at the 
invitation of local organizations, and works with them until the 
task has been completed, there is presented to the people a well- 
rounded plan for the complete elevation of children who work. 
One of the most useful functions of the Committee has been 
the securing through its experts of State Code Commissions 
and advising them in the preparation of a Children’s Code— 
the Children’s Bill of Rights. 

Every year in the United States over a million children be- 
tween 14 and 16 leave school to go to work. Hundreds of 
thousands are recruited to protect America’s “infant” indus- 
tries—even though it has been clearly demonstrated that 
American workshops can succeed without child labor, and in 
spite of the fact that we have quite generally accepted the dic- 
tum that any industry which cannot afford to pay a living wage 

o adults has no right to live. 

There are few agencies that work among children which get 
loser to them than the social settlement because not only are 
heir buildings in operation every day in the week and every 


292 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


evening, but the contacts are more direct and more personal 
than they are in almost any other relationship. 

In early days church people had a strong prejudice against 
social settlements, because, it was declared, they did not teach 
religion. This criticism was unjust. There are different ways 
of teaching religion to children and some of these methods are 
better than those employed in the average Sunday School. The 
high grade workers in the average social settlement are capable 
of giving children a finer outlook upon life and a better train- 
ing in morals and ethics—even though this is done indirectly— 
than many another society which claims to be purely religious 
in its character. Furthermore, it should be remembered that 
a social settlement is not organized primarily for the purpose 
of teaching religion any more than the public school is organ- 
ized to teach religion. In all fairness the critics of the social 
settlement should have differentiated between the functions of 
institutions which were organized for the purpose of teach- 
ing English and mathematics, those organized for the purpose 
of teaching social ethics and community responsibility, and those 


which were organized to teach religion, pure and simple, as 


most of us understand it. 

The social settlement, while it was organized primarily to 
emphasize the social aspects of the child’s life, nevertheless had 
a broader concept of its responsibilities than almost any other 
similar enterprise. 

From its very beginning I have been familiar with the work 
being done at Christodora House—which faces Tompkins 
Square in New York City—serving for part of this time as its 
publicity counselor. It was organized in the basement of a 
tenement house on Avenue B, near Eleventh Street, by Miss C. 


ee —— 


I. MacColl, who for nearly thirty years has been its head © 


worker. Christodora House, while having all the elements | 
found in the average social settlement, has an atmosphere which | 


is peculiarly its own. There is a personality—an individuality 
perhaps—which dominates every part of its work. It offers 


hospitality to every worthy organization in so far as its facili- 
ties will permit. Its Music School is of special value because — 
the study of music is combined with extensive social work. For | 





CHILDREN OF THE CITY 293 


instance, good manners, dancing, and English are included in 
the curriculum, although apparently they haven’t anything to 
do with music, but they help give a cultural background which 
it is necessary for an artist to have. 

The “Poet’s Guild’ of Christodora House is composed of 
representative American poets, banded together for the en- 
couragement of young people of the East Side tenements who 
possess the poetic instinct. Among those who are members of 
the Guild are Edwin Markham, Margaret Widdemer, Robert 
Haven Schauffler, Anna Hempstead Branch, Percy MacKaye, 
Angela Morgan, Amelia Josephine Burr, Charles Hanson 
Towne, Herman Hagedorn, and about a score of others of 
equal reputation. 

The dream of the Guild is to found a “Poet’s House’’ where 
East Side boys and girls can find a spiritual home. It is hoped 
to have a little theater with club rooms and pictures and books 
and music, and a dramatic school with a chance to paint and 
model, to dance, to play, and to sing. 

It was a real pleasure to help promote for a year the work 
at The Music School Settlement, which is situated in the heart 
of the most densely populated and most needy part of New 
York City. Nobody knows the struggle for self-expression 
going on in this district. In the midst of extreme poverty and 
sickness, of loneliness and discomfort, of cold and hunger, and 
of every other kind of suffering there is nevertheless a deep 
yearning for music, 

The children living under these conditions need an emo- 
tional outlet from the hard facts of life which they meet daily 
—in the shop where only their hands are employed in running 
the machines, and in the home where the monotony and dull- 
ness of their tasks demand such an expression. 

At The Music School Settlement a thousand children are 
annually given such a chance. There are individual lessons on 
the piano, violin, and ’cello, and in voice culture, theory, en- 
semble and sight-reading. Half of these students are in the 
harmony classes. Nearly 100 teachers are on the staff in vari- 
ous departments. Three orchestras are conducted : the Seniors, 
the Juniors, and the Elementary, each of which averages about 


294 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


fifty pieces, which give free monthly concerts. Students range 
from 4 years to 34 years in age. The work of The Music 
School Settlement is particularly effective in the heart of this, 
the most foreign section of New York City, because music is 
the universal language which speaks to all hearts. | 





XXIV 
SOME EXPERIENCES IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES 


M Y first experience in Europe was in 1910. It was about 
this time that several of the leading New York Churches 
seemed enamored of English preachers. They had called 
several English ministers, and the impression seemed to have 
gone out among the ministers, particularly in England, that 
there were great opportunities for them in the United States 
because of the alleged incompetency of American preachers. 

One day I met with the Presbytery of London, and after ad- 
dressing them on some phase of the industrial situation in the 
United States, I was surrounded after the meeting by a group 
of a dozen or more who questioned me very closely about the 
opportunities which they might have in America. 

Looking at them half quizzically but with a serious face, I 
said: 

“To tell the truth, the reason that these American churches 
are calling so many English preachers is because they like 
your brogue and your long hair, but after you have been over 
in our country for some time and your speech becomes Ameri- 
canized and your hair falls out, you'll have to make good like 
the rest of us.” 

They looked at each other quickly in surprise. J did not stop 
to explain. When I walked out of the church, my friend who 
had introduced me to the meeting—himself a prominent min- 
ister who was later called to one of our larger American 
churches—simply howled with laughter, and every once in a 
while during the day as we traveled about, he would slap his 
knee and would refer to the joke on the London preachers. 

On this first trip to Europe, I addressed some of the leaders 
in the universities and seminaries, and also some large meet- 
ings of brotherhoods in various parts of England, Scotland, 


and Ireland, which were composed mainly of workingmen. In 
295 


296 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


Belfast I told the audience that at the close of my address I 
would be very glad to answer questions. The first question put 
to me was submitted by a rather aggressive-looking Socialist. 

“Do you think it is right for a church to own a distillery ?” 
he asked me. 7 

Turning to the questioner, I said, “I suppose that you really 
mean whether it is right for the Church to accept a contribu- 
tion from a distillery,’ because I felt sure that he had not 
stated his question correctly. 

“No,” he came back, half fiercely, “I mean just what I say. 
Do you think it is right for the Church to own a distillery?” 

“Not on your life,’ I fired back at him. 

Whereupon the presiding officer arose and said that the 
Irish Presbyterian Church had been left two distilleries by the 
will of their former owners, and that they had not yet been 
able to dispose of them. I was amazed later to discover that 
fifteen hundred clergymen, all of them in the Church of Eng- 
land, I understood, owned stock in English breweries and 
distilleries, 

The whole question of prohibition is quite different in Eng- 
land from that in the United States, and it will undoubtedly 
take a very much longer time to have prohibition placed upon 
the Statute books in England than it did in America. I found, 
for example, that whereas in the United States the people in 
the rural districts were strong for prohibition, the same class 
in England drinks as much, if not more, than they do in the 
towns. Furthermore, the race question in the southern part of 
the United States, which was largely responsible for the South- 
ern States voting for prohibition, does not exist in England. 
Indeed, the Negro in England is almost upon an equality with 
the white race. At any rate, he is scarcely ever discriminated 
against. The attitude of the employers of labor in England is 
also different from that of employers in America. There is 
no particular desire on the part of English employers to 
have their workers cease drinking, as they themselves ordi- 
narily use intoxicating liquor. In the United States prohibi- 
tion has largely been made a moral issue. It is not so re- 
garded in England. 


eee 





IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES 297 


However, there is a marked difference in the attitude of 
many English labor leaders toward the liquor problem. One 
day I met in the House of Commons about thirty of the mem- 
bers of Parliament, all of whom represented the Labor Party. 
Arthur Henderson presided. This meeting was in the nature 
of a reception given to me, at which I was expected to discuss 
American social and economic conditions. Most of the after- 
noon was spent at this “tea” and as there were among the 
group some of the most notable of the labor men who later 
took their places in the Labor Ministry, there was a most 
profitable discussion. I observed that while it was possible 
for members of Parliament to secure almost any kind of a 
drink which they desired, these thirty labor leaders all drank 
tea. 

I went to London in 1924 primarily for the purpose of ad- 
dressing the convention of the Associated Advertising Clubs 
of the World. About 2,000 delegates went from the United 
States to attend this advertising meeting. However, I re- 
mained about three months to study social conditions in 
Europe. 

Extensive preparations had been made for my giving a num- 
ber of addresses in London and on the Continent. In prac- 
tically every case I was introduced as the founder and superin- 
tendent of the Labor Temple in New York City, although my 
work at the Labor Temple had really been quite incidental com- 
pared with a number of other activities. It indicated that the 
work at the Labor Temple was in the minds of Europeans the 
most striking thing with which I had had to do. 

I addressed all kinds of audiences, from great crowds at 
Wembley—the big fair that was on while I was in London— 
to crowds of working people in the east end of London. In 
one of the smaller assembly rooms in the House of Commons 
a reception was given me by some of the leaders in social work 
in Great Britain. The Deputy Speaker of the house presided. 
_ The occasion was the meeting of the International Conference 
on Labor and Religion, whose convener was F. Herbert Stead, 
and the Chairmanship of whose Committee in America had 
been offered me. ‘The interest in the subject of labor and 


298 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


religion has grown in Great Britain in a most remarkable way, 
particularly among the prominent labor leaders, 

My own presentation of conditions in the United States was 
given careful attention, although it was very striking that in 
the discussion which followed exactly the same problems were 
brought to the attention ef the conference that one heard on 
similar occasions in the United States. This to me was an evi- 
dence, not only of the international character of the problem 
of the Church and Labor, but that there seems to be a like- 
mindedness on the part of Labor as a whole toward the Church 
and religion. There were perhaps few questions upon which 
the Churches of the world could more profitably unite, with 
the assurance, not only of unanimity of expression, but for the 
purpose of carrying out a definite program, than that of deal- 
ing with their relationship to the workingman. 

On a Sunday afternoon in East Ham—which is in the ex- 
treme east end of London—I talked at a most remarkable 
meeting of over a thousand workingmen, the institution under 
whose auspices the meeting was held being the outgrowth of 
an evangelistic campaign conducted by Dwight L. Moody 
many years ago. The form which this organization took after 
Mr. Moody’s visit was another evidence of the extreme practi- 
cality of Mr. Moody’s ideas regarding what should be done 
to meet the social needs of working people in the districts in 
which they lived. 

I had letters of introduction to about fifty of the leaders in 
public life in several European countries, but I presented very 
few of them during the months that I was studying social and 
economic conditions in these countries, mainly because I found 
my greatest interest in talking with the people themselves, visit- 
ing their homes, and entering into their social activities. Be- 
sides this, I interviewed literally hundreds of men and women 
who were actually in daily contact with the people and their 
problems, and I felt that they could best tell me what their 
conditions were, how they felt, and what they thought. I soon 
discovered that the knowledge of Americans concerning these — 
conditions was so meager or inaccurate that it was easily under- 
stood why there was so much prejudice against European peo- — 





IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES 299 


ple. It is almost tragic that we should know so little about the 
nations overseas. 

This lack of knowledge applies not only to the people them- 
selves, but to great national problems. It was peculiarly so 
with regard to the League of Nations—its formation, its sup- 
port, its purpose and its activities. On the steamer going to 
Europe was one of New York’s greatest “civic reformers”—a 
business man of outstanding ability, integrity and unquestioned 
accomplishment and culture. Talking to a representative of the 
League of Nations who was aboard, he remarked: 

“I suppose that since the League has assumed such large 
proportions, you have a Secretary who gives his time perma- 
nently to its work between the annual meetings of the General 
Assembly.” 

He was amazed when informed that eight hundred people 
were steadily at work for the League in Geneva, and that three 
hundred of these were in the Labor Department alone. 

I was frankly captivated by the spirit and culture of the Eng- 
lish. One could see that there were hundreds of years of de- 
velopment back of them. I refer, of course, to the upper 
classes. But even among many of their workingmen there was 
a depth and stability which was very obvious. Their serious- 
ness of purpose and homely culture was seen in their work, 
their homes, and in their evident yearning for literary and re- 
ligious knowledge. 

I attended a meeting of Aldwich Lodge of the Masonic 
Order in London. The members were all dressed in evening 
clothes, with white kid gloves, together with their regular re- 
galia. There was a dignity and order throughout the entire 
convocation which was extremely impressive. I attended re- 
ligious services frequently, going to various churches, but al- 
ways was there that same composure which denoted strength 
and confidence. The same thing was true of labor unions and 
literary groups. And unquestionably one saw it in the respect 
shown for law—particularly as it applied to obedience to the 
policemen’s gestures as he guided traffic on London’s crowded 
thoroughfares. 

The weeks spent in Switzerland were also a revelation of 


300 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


the wonderful character of the people. The histories and tra- 
ditions of the centuries have left their mark upon them. It is 
not necessary to go into the story of Geneva, for example, 
which owes so much to the statesmanship of John Calvin, who 
helped to make it the city of refuge for those who had ad- 
vanced ideas regarding the progress of the human race. Cal- 
vin himself undoubtedly was guilty on some occasions of nar- 
rowness. At least so history tells us. In the main Geneva 
will always stand as a monument to this remarkable states- 
man, who tried to make religion the dominant factor in the 
government of the city, but it is a city whose sympathies have 
been so enlarged that it seems the natural thing for the League 
of Nations to find shelter within its bounds. 

The Wall of the Reformation in Geneva, with its remark- 
able proclamations of historical events in the history of the 
nations, in their fight for religious and political freedom, is 
one of the most stirring things that I have ever seen. If the 
spirit of these proclamations could but control the League of 
Nations, righteousness and justice and peace would fill the 
whole world. 

As one visits the principal cities of Switzerland, the differ- 
ence in the great cathedrals in Protestant and Catholic cities 
becomes pronounced. ‘Those, for example, in Lausanne and 
Zurich, from which all the old Catholic material has been re- 
moved and in which the very simplest decorations are now 
employed, bring out the austerity of the Protestant religion; 
whereas, in the Catholic cathedrals, as in Fribourg, one finds 
the color and warmth which is particularly appealing to vast 
numbers of the people who are attracted by the ritualistic 
form of service. 

The playing of the great organ in the Cathedral at Fri- 
bourg, said to be the finest in the world, is most thrilling. The 
story is told that the eyes of the builder were removed because 
of the fear that he would construct another organ for some 
other city which might surpass the Fribourg instrument. Per- 
haps this story is of a piece with stories of a similar character 
referring to other constructions—buildings, monuments, or 
memorials, which one so commonly hears in various parts of 


IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES 301 


Europe. If these stories are true, the idealists who centuries 
ago saw the “vision splendid’ must have been very jealous of 
others who might be given the same vision. 

I spent two weeks in Geneva, studying the League of Na- 
tions, but mainly the Labor Department of the League. From 
nine in the morning until the closing hour, I was interviewing 
heads of departments and executives regarding the work which 
they were carrying on in behalf of the entire civilized world. 
Many difficulties presented themselves—differences in coun- 
tries, in laws, in customs, in economic status, indeed, in stand- 
ards of every kind—but in spite of this the impression which 
I obtained from these interviews and the analysis of the re- 
ports which I read and which I have since carefully studied 
leads me to the conclusion that here is an enterprise, whatever 
_may be its political implications, which is worthy of the sup- 
port of every right-thinking people the world over. It has 
rightly been called a real “Parliament of Man.” 

While in London, I visited Westminster Abbey many times 
and was much impressed as I saw the statues and memorials to 
kings and statesmen and poets and soldiers and other great peo- 
ple who were honored here, and frequently I was caught up 
with surprise as I] saw way off in an obscure corner of the 
Abbey the name of some great hero whom I had always ad- 
mired. But the thing that impressed me most of all was that 
in the midst of all this greatness—crowded with histories which 
had made England famous, and about whose names its won- 
derful traditions had been written—a great space was devoted 
to the Unknown Soldier. To me it was significant that 
whereas in the past the history of the nations has been written 
about the lives of kings and commanders, the common people 
being used merely as a background for their own exploitations, 
here was a recognition of the masses, and a prophecy of the 
better days to come. 

It was with a good deal of a thrill that I stood on the long 
city pier on the river front of Hull, in the fall of 1924, and 
gazed across the Humber, and recalled that just on the other 
side a contingent of the Pilgrims had arranged with a Dutch 


302 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


captain to take them across to Holland, in their first flight 
towards freedom. 

The immediate occasion of my being in Hull at that time 
was to attend the convention of the British Trades Union Con- 
gress. It was significant that it was just one hundred years 
since labor in England was permitted to organize, and it was 
the first anniversary of the coming into power of the Labor 
Party. Much was made of these facts during the sessions of 
the convention, which continued for a week. 

In addressing a mass meeting of workingmen in Hull on 
Sunday night, I said incidentally in the course of my address, 
that after witnessing the scenes in Hull’s public houses on the 
night before and seeing large numbers of workingmen and 
women reeling about in the streets all during the evening, I 
was not particularly disturbed about whatever competition 
working people of this type might offer the American work- 
ingman in the industrial field, because on the whole, the Ameri- 
can workingman was quite able to hold his own under present 
conditions. 

The introduction of the fraternal delegates at the Labor Con- 
gress was a noteworthy event. When the five delegates from 
the All-Russian Council of Trade Unionists appeared upon 
the platform, the delegates arose to their feet and cheered ter- 
rifically. The delegate from the Canadian Trades and Labor 
Congress was also enthusiastically received, but to my amaze- 
ment, when the two delegates from the American Federation 
of Labor were presented there was scarcely a handclap. 

Later it was demonstrated to me that at least part of the 
opposition to the American delegates was due to the fact that 
the British Trades Union Congress is so thoroughly wedded to 
its political program that it is utterly out of patience with the 
American Federation of Labor on account of its lack of inter- 
est in the formation of a political party. 

I was impressed with one outstanding fact in all the discus- 


sion during the week. The Russians, in spite of the glowing — 


picture of their idealistic dreams, told a story of hunger and 
suffering of every kind—and Russia, as it was stated, has a 
“dictatorship of the proletariat.” The British had a Labor 


IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES 303 


Government in power, but there were pitiful stories told of 
unemployment and underfeeding throughout the country. But 
when the American delegate presented his report after having 
been at least tacitly charged with representing a government 
that was plainly capitalistic in its character, he told of the great 
progress made by American workingmen, the abundance of em- 
ployment, the large sums of money being deposited in Labor 
banks, and in general the healthy conditions under which the 
workers of his country were living—although he frankly ad- 
mitted the conditions were by no means ideal. These strong 
contrasts stood out very clearly after each country had told 
its story. 

I was in Berlin during the summer of 1924, and even at that 
time the Salvation Army was conducting its feeding stations 
in the public parks and at other points. J saw one day a line 
of old women waiting with kettles and every imaginable sort 
of receptacle to receive the food which would be given to them 
by the attendants. Noticing the unusually refined features of 
the women as compared with those that one ordinarily finds on 
the “bread line’ that I have seen in our American cities, I re- 
marked to the social worker who was my guide in the study 
that I was making in the homes of Berlin’s poor: 

“These women do not look like beggars or tenement house 
people.” To which my guide replied: 

“No; many of these women formerly belonged to the aris- — 
tocracy of Berlin. They have been deprived of practically 
everything which they owned before the war and are living in 
little rooms in near-by tenement houses doing the best they can, 
but dependent mostly upon charity for their maintenance.” 

I noticed women of a similar character on the streets of Ber- 
lin, sometimes long after midnight, selling boxes of matches. 
The appearance of the men upon the streets, even among some 
of the business men, indicated their straitened circumstances. 
Their clothing was either very cheap or very shabby. Many 
travelers passing through the city, even those walking along 
Berlin’s famous thoroughfare, Unter den Linden, carried their 
shoes in their hands or slung over their shoulders so as not to 
wear them out. 


304 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


On account of the food blockade during the four years of 
the war, it was said that 763,000 civilians died, consisting 
mainly of women and children. I saw some photographs taken 
of groups of children by the relief agencies in Berlin which 
showed that not only were their bodies greatly emaciated, but 
they were stunted in growth and showed other signs of under- 
nourishment and malnutrition. 

But one needed simply to cross the city to the West End to 
find the cafés and theaters crowded to the doors. ‘The sign, 
Verschlossen, was frequently found on the outside of these 
cafés—closed on account of the crowds. Entering one of 
these cafés one evening, I ordered my dinner, and when I had 
completed my instructions to the waiter, he asked me what 
kind of wine I wanted to drink. I replied that I did not drink 
wine, and bowing very gravely, he remarked that all those who 
sat in that particular section of the café were expected to buy a 
bottle of wine, but that I might go to another part of the café 
and order my dinner without this “extra.” Making my way 
to the place designated by the waiter, I again repeated my 
order for dinner, but was then informed that I was expected 
to order a glass of wine. Evidently my situation had become 
obvious to groups of diners seated near by, and they laughed 


rather sneeringly as I left the table and walked toward the 


checking room to get my hat—for the care of which I had paid 
half a mark when I entered. 

There is no doubt, however, that large numbers of those 
who patronized the West End cafés were visitors to the city, 
and, of course, there were many Germans who came to Berlin 
who had plenty of money to spend. They, however, did not 
represent the great mass of people in Germany, nor could it 
be said in fairness that they in their extravagance represented 
the people in Berlin. 

One could scarcely recognize in the young people and the 


middle class in Berlin the typical German that one sees in 


America. The girls in Berlin walk the streets with the same 


swagger air that one sees in New York. Indeed, they are 
dressed much like the most stylish New York girls, and if 


they were in New York, they would easily pass for typical 


: 


OE a 


IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES 305 


Americans. Those in the restaurants and cafés have the same 
smart air that one sees in similar American institutions. 

Unfortunately, impressions regarding Germans are obtained 
by Americans principally from cartoonists. Nowhere does 
one see a greater refinement and culture than among typical 
Berlin people. The discipline among the children and the edu- 
cational facilities offered them create a sturdy spirit which 
manifests itself in every walk of life. This was noted particu- 
larly among the boys and girls as they walked along the street, 
bareheaded, with a strong, steady stride, with head uplifted 
and with high spirit. 

One of the most dramatic incidents which I ever experienced 
happened on the Sunday afternoon that all of Germany cele- 
brated the tenth anniversary of the beginning of the World 
War. 

In Berlin the memorial service—for the celebration took the 
form of remembrance of the soldier dead—was held on the 
steps of the Reichstag Building, which was appropriately dec- 
orated, not only with flags and banners and evergreens, but 
with soldiers in their wartime uniforms and the officials of the 
new Republic. There must have been fully a quarter of a 
million people in the immense audience, which was packed sol- 
idly as far as the eye could see. 

There were times when it seemed that scores must be crushed 
to death as the crowd swayed back and forth. I sat astride of 
the crouching lion on Bismarck’s statue which faces the Reich- 
stag Building. From this point of vantage, raised as I was 
about fifteen feet above the crowds, I could see and hear all 
that went on. About a score of others were huddled together 
on top of the statue, in imminent peril of being pushed off on 
to the heads of the crowd below. There I sat with-my camera, 
taking dozens of pictures. 

It had been arranged that exactly at noon the entire nation 
was to pause for two minutes with heads uncovered, out of 
respect to the soldiers who had died in the war. At the first 
sound of the cannon, which was to be the signal for the two 
minutes of silence, a large group of men back of the monu- 
ment, who proved to be Communists, began to sing: their in- 


306 A SON OF THK BOWERY 


ternational hymn, and fiercely pulled their hats down over their 
heads in defiance of the request that their heads remain uncov- 
ered. They threw their “Red’’ literature into the air and gave 
cheer after cheer for the Communist party. ‘This naturally 
destroyed entirely the climax of the meeting, which ended in 
great confusion. -A group of mounted police tried to rush the 
Communists back of the statue but failed to disperse them. 
It seemed to me that the people themselves showed mighty 
little spirit in not protesting against this direct insult offered 
their soldier dead. I wondered what would have happened in 
almost any city in America if a similar demonstration had been 
attempted at a memorial service. 

On the following Sunday, I attended at the “Grosser Schau- 
spielhaus,” the fifth anniversary celebration of the signing of 
the German constitution at Weimar. This was one of the 
most enthusiastic meetings which I attended in Europe. The 
hall, which accommodated, say, about four thousand people, 
was packed, each person having paid an admission of approxi- 
mately thirty cents. The audience appeared to be a horizontal 
slice of the population in Berlin: all classes were represented. 
Again there was an opportunity to express the war-like spirit 
which I had heard existed in Germany, but the sentiment which 
received the greatest applause was that expressed by the speaker 
representing the Democratic party, who declared, “We are 
through with war; we are finished with militarism.” This 
seemed to be the prevailing sentiment wherever the people were 
gathered together. It was rather striking, however, that one 
of the speakers, in protesting against the phlegmatic attitude of 
the Germans toward the new Republic, declared most earnestly, 
“We are a republic without Republicans, a democracy without 
Democrats.” It was also significant that in spite of the ex- 
hortation of the Democratic daily newspapers in Berlin to the 
people to display the “black-red-gold flag” of the new Republic, 
scarcely a flag of this character was shown in the city, except 
on the public buildings and the newspaper offices themselves. 

I attended another meeting in what was formerly the home 
of one of the nobility in Germany of a society representing the 
owners of large estates. At this meeting, which consisted 


IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES 307 


largely of the aristocracy of Berlin, a strong monarchistic 
spirit was displayed. It was manifested, not only in the ad- 
dresses given, but in conversations which I had with many of 
those present. Probably one reason why the Roman Catholic 
Church is making such progress in Germany to-day is that 
many of the people, having been deprived of the comfort of 
political authority to which they had been accustomed, are now 
seeking the note of spiritual authority found in the Church. 

On several occasions while in the city I ate my lunch in the 
Schloss, which was formerly the Kaiser’s home in Berlin—but 
I ate it in the kitchen. However, the Kaiser’s kitchen was 
rather a pretentious series of rooms which were altogether 
comfortable. The lunching arrangements were conducted by 
an Austrian-Polish noblewoman who desired to do something 
for the German students of Berlin and she secured the use of 
the Kaiser’s kitchen from the local authorities. 

Discussing the question of the inflation of the German mark 
with a prominent official, he frankly admitted that however 
unethical it may have appeared, it was imperative that Germany 
continue this process so that its own internal debts might be 
paid even if they did destroy the fortunes of vast multitudes 
of its own people, and to save the country from the revolu- 
tionists, who would have seized it upon its financial collapse. 
When deflation came, the Ruhr situation alone saved Germany 
from disintegration, for it held the country together. 

Probably few people realize what the inflation of the mark 
meant to the people within Germany itself. With the fall of 
the mark from a value of eight marks for the dollar in Feb- 
ruary, 1919, to 18,000,000,000 marks for the dollar in 1922 
those who had lived in great comfort were suddenly reduced to 
the most abject poverty. They could not maintain the houses 
in which they were living, for it was impossible to pay the 
taxes and the upkeep, and I was told that many gave away their 
homes because of the necessity of living in the most reduced 
circumstances, 

The rapid fall in the value of the mark during the last six 
months of the inflation period resulted in a riot of spending 
because it was realized that any money possessed on a certain 


308 - A. SON OF THE BOWERY, 


day would have only one-half or less of its value on the day 
following, so that when workingmen, for example, received 
their day’s pay, they spent every mark before going home. It 
did not matter much what they purchased; it was anything to 
get rid of the money which they knew would be greatly cheap- 
ened over night. The whole experience had a most demoraliz- 
ing effect upon the entire nation. 

One of the striking things encountered in Germany was the 
“Youth Movement.” Night after night I saw groups of young 
people parading through Unter den Linden with military pre- 
cision in their movements—boys and girls together, carrying 
guitars and zithers and other musical instruments, and often 
singing as they marched. The movement had its origin, I was 
told, in the desire on the part of the youth in Germany to 
be free from all adult control—in politics, in religion and in 
social and economic life. -They stood for the simple life. They 
did not drink or smoke. They were said to hold to the highest 
ideals in their conduct. They roamed about the country and 
conducted meetings in churches or upon the streets, their lead- 
ers speaking in favor of simple living. Originally they re- 
sorted to the woods, were plainly dressed and lived on vege- 
tables. They danced the old folk dances and sang the old folk 
songs. But as the movement grew it seemed to flatten out. 
While its adherents studied philosophy and religion the move- 
ment somehow lost its romance and appeal. They no longer 
had the “searching spirit” as one social worker put it to me. 
Many of the young people I found to be eager to express their 
ethical ideals, and they turned to Socialism because they felt 
that there was no response in the Church. 

Much the same kind of thing was found among the working 
people of Germany. In the main they have long been opposed 
to the Church, but it was said by those who were closest to 
them that real religion and the ethics of Jesus have always ap- 
pealed to them. This has been the supreme motive of the best 
of the Socialists and Communists, I was told, even though they 
were alienated from the Church itself. The reason why Marx- 
ian Socialism has been so bitterly hated is, it was said, because 
it destroyed patriotism among fully one-third of the popula- 


IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES 309 


tion, so that patriotism as it exists in America, in France or in 
Poland does not exist in Germany. Socialism, its leaders have 
openly declared in the German Reichstag, is an international 
patriotism, which, while idealistic, seems far in the distance. 
It may be well to remark at this point that one reason why the 
Jews are so bitterly hated in Germany is because of this same 
reason—that is, the strong international spirit which exists 
among them is stronger than the German spirit. 

One of the most prominent leaders in the industrial life 
of Germany said to me that as the Germans had for two 
thousand years been accustomed to being ruled by a “Kaiser,” 
it was simply impossible for them to adjust themselves to the 
ways of a democracy. When I asked him if he really believed 
that they had learned nothing in two thousand years in the way 
of self-government, and that they were not capable of keeping 
abreast of all modern tendencies in this direction, he simply 
shook his head half-pityingly as though I did not understand, 
remarking, however, that the German people are quite different 
from every other race in the world—temperamentally, his- 
torically, politically and scientifically. He said that there never 
was a time when the majority of the German people favored a 
republic, and that between sixty and seventy per cent of the 
people were at heart in favor of a monarchical form of gov- 
ernment. 

I went to Mexico while that country was in the midst of 
one of its periodical revolutions—during the interval when 
Pancho Villa and Carranza were the centers of attraction. I 
found that fundamentally the revolutions in Mexico were due 
to economic causes more than to political controversies, and 
that one of the chief causes for Mexican revolutions was the 
fact that the people were landless. Every revolutionary leader 
during the past one hundred years has promised to give back 
the land to the people, but not one of them has made good on 
his promises. Diaz even cheated them out of what little pieces 
of land they had left. | 

One reason why it was so difficult to conquer the armies of 
‘Carranza and Villa was that most of them had no permanent 
abiding place. They owned neither houses nor lands and they 


310 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


could live just as comfortably in the fastnesses of the moun- 
tains, depending upon forays for food and supplies, as in the 
average Mexican “town.” 

Juarez was just across the river from El Paso, but so far 
as its general appearance and the character of the population 
was concerned, it might just as well have been in the heart of 
Mexico. ‘The one-story adobe houses in which the people 
lived, looked as though they had risen out of the earth on 
which they stood. They were of the same color because they 
were made of the dirt of the roadside—low, almost window- 
less, usually very dirty inside, with dirt of different varieties, 
they were monotonous and uninviting. The houses were built 
of home-made blocks about one foot square and probably three 
inches thick. It was not much of a trick to build a house of this 
kind, and there was not much loss when it was blown up by the 
enemy—that is, the financial loss was not very great, however 
it may have affected the domestic life of the people. 

I passed a corner where a few days before the soldiers had 
piled up corpses by the dozens and burned them in the sight of 
all those who cared to look. Stray arms and legs and heads 
were kicked back into the fire as though they were chunks of 
wood. Some of them still remained lying in the gutter. 

I was in Juarez on the Sunday evening when Carranza 
came to establish his capital in that city. The streets and 
roads were lined with soldiers who served as guards, and hun- 
dreds of Secret Service men mingled with the crowds. It was 
interesting to study the soldiers who stood on guard, many 
of whom were old men, but there were boys who could not 
have been more than fourteen or fifteen. I saw many Mexican 
boys with limbs shot off and their faces badly bruised, victims 
of the revolution. Two little fellows growing weary of stand- 
ing still so long, began to play. <A passing dog furnished 
amusement for them. They prodded him with their guns and 
seemed greatly to enjoy the howls of the animal, as did the 
crowd. The boy soldiers began wrestling and doing other boy- 
like stunts, when an officer approached. I expected the officer 
to exercise his authority and severely rebuke the youngsters, but 
to my amazement he merely shook his head and spoke gently 


IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES 311 


to them. This officer evidently knew his job—at any rate, he 
appeared to understand boys. 

Finally, shots were heard in the distance. Carranza’s per- 
sonal bodyguard of two thousand soldiers had changed on the 
outskirts of the town their old uniforms for the new ones pro- 
vided for this occasion and they were now ready to proceed. 
The shrill notes of a bugle sounded from the platform, a big 
choir of children sang national anthems, and there were wild 
cheers from the women and hoarse shouts from the men as 
President Carranza approached. Until that moment the crowd 
had stood stolid and silent, but the band got them started. 

After a company of horsemen came Carranza, walking bare- 
headed in the dusty road, surrounded by a mob of his people. 
They crowded him hard in an effort to get near him. He stood 
head and shoulders above them, walking with a long, firm 
stride, his head thrown back and his long beard flowing. 
Rumor had it that Carranza was a broken old man, unfit to be 
President of Mexico, but his bearing on this occasion belied 
that story. 

The entrance of President Carranza into the capital was in 
marked contrast to Diaz’ just five years before, when Juarez 
was dressed in splendor to welcome the old President of Mex- 
ico. In Diaz’ day there were not the bombarded buildings 
and the general signs of destruction that one could now see on 
every hand. One had but to glance a couple of hundred feet 
from the Juarez statue at which Carranza was received, to see 
the old City Hall in a state of ruin. When Diaz was wel- 
comed, this same building was richly carpeted and decorated. 
Then, there were really beautiful arches along the line of 
march; for Carranza there were only cheap, tawdry affairs 
made of muslin and very poorly constructed. 

But more significant than anything else was the character of 
the people that Diaz had at his beck and call—the wealth of 
Mexico. It was said that when he was preparing for one of 
his many inaugurals, he made known to his friend, “General” 
Terrazas—the wealthiest man in Mexico—that he wanted one 
thousand horses. 

“All right,” said Terrazas, “what color?” 


312 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


On the day that Carranza came into Juarez, Terrazas’ son 
was held for an immense ransom by Villa, and anything in the 
shape of a horse went in the Carranza régime—no matter what 
his color. When Diaz came into Juarez, there were present the 
soft-voiced and easy-mannered aristocracy. When Carranza 
arrived, there were some wealthy people present—a very few— 
but the poor, the very poor, monopolized the occasion. 

I did not see a single silk hat, as was formerly the case. 
There were sombreros with dangling cords on the heads of the 
men, and black shawls thrown over the heads of the women. 
When Diaz came into Juarez five years before, Mr. and Mrs. 
Villa were riding the mountains as outlaws, with prices upon 
their heads. To-day they were the idols of the people. 

The next day I was walking through one of the side streets 
of Juarez, looking for camera objects. On one corner I saw 
a “cantino”’—a saloon—in front of which reeled a group of 
Constitutionalist soldiers loaded down with big cartridges 
which were inserted in several belts slung about their bodies. 
I had taken a picture of them from across the street, when 
they spied me. One of the group called out as he came toward 
me with a rifle in his hand. I had been warned not to go to 
Juarez alone with a camera, and I thought that now my time 
had surely come, because I believed that this drunken Mexican 
soldier was capable of doing almost anything to an American. 

“Hey,” he called, “you take a picture?” 

“Yes!” I replied. I could not deny it. Then I waited for 
whatever he was going to do to me, but to my great relief he 
simply asked: 

“You take a picture of my house—my family?’ 

“Sure,” I said gayly. ‘Come on, where do you live?” 

“Ah, mafiana,’ (to-morrow) he said, “nine o’clock to- 
morrow.” 

And this story tells what Mexico suffers from most of all— 
mafiana—it is characteristic of the people. Even their guer- 
rilla warfare is a sort of “mafiana” affair—an ever-continu- 
ing, never-ending struggle. 


XXV 
LABOR LEADERS HERE AND ABROAD 


-_ ONCE heard Governor Allen of Kansas in a debate with 
Samuel Gompers remark to the audience that if a cabinet 
were to be formed consisting altogether of American labor 
leaders, they would all want to be ministers of war. This was 
rather a harsh characterization and yet it fairly depicts the 
American labor leader as a fighter rather than a statesman. 
The English labor leader does not hesitate to fight when 
necessary—and he hits when he fights—but there are men in 
the labor movement in England who easily measure up in the 
field of constructive politics with any of the leaders in the old 
line parties. It is probably true that, taken as a whole, the 
American workingman is superior to the English workingman 
intellectually, socially and physically, but the English labor 
leader is superior to the American labor leader in economic and 
legislative affairs. This is perhaps due in part to the fact that 
the English labor movement has been longer in existence than 
the American movement, and that there is a history and prece- 
dent back of the English movement which in a measure stand- 
ardizes the activities of the Englishman. The men who are 
in this movement have been compelled to study more deeply 
into social, economic and political facts which confront the 
workingman of England because their economic and political 
welfare is so closely related to that of the nations surrounding 
them. They must therefore take cognizance of the profounder 
problems that challenge the nations of Europe. This has nat- 
urally developed international-mindedness on the part of the 
English labor leaders. There is another factor which has de- 
termined the position of the English labor leader, namely, the 
fact that he has practically made up his mind that he will 
always be a “labor man.” He doesn’t look forward to very 


314 A SON OF THE BOWERY, 


much of a future except as he may find it in the political field, 
but even here he will be recognized only as a member of the 
Labor party. Therefore, it behooves him to keep close to the 
labor movement as a whole. 

The American labor leader, on the other hand, deals pri- 
marily with domestic problems. He has felt himself so far 
removed from European conditions that he scarcely thinks of 
them except in the terms of the immigration problem, and in 
this connection he assumes merely a negative attitude, insisting 
upon straight-out restriction. The whole thing to him is very 
simple because he depends upon the United States Congress 
to enact the law which will bring it about. Furthermore, the 
American labor leader has many opportunities for entering 
business or the professions because of the valuable experience 
which he may have gained in the field of labor, and he is 
likely to be pulled out from the labor movement at almost any 
time because he has been offered a much higher position than 
labor could ever afford to give him. Indeed, the whole differ- 
ence between the American labor leader and the English labor 
leader may be said to lie in the fundamental difference between 
Europe and America—European traditions serving as a re- 
striction to the progress of the individual, whereas American 
conditions offer endless opportunities to every citizen. Of 
course, this very restriction of the European labor man has 
served to compel him to dig more deeply into social and eco- 
nomic principles, thus giving him a distinct advantage in the 
performance of his own task. 

I have attended at least a dozen annual conventions of the 


American Federation of Labor, in session two weeks each year, 


and I have come to know nearly every labor leader of promi- 
nence in the United States, The four hundred odd delegates 


who annually attend the conventions of the American Federa- © 
tion of Labor are selected for the most part from among the 
officials of international unions, who have back of them a close- 
up experience in labor affairs and who are thoroughly con-~ 


versant with the day-by-day problems of a labor union official. 
With a few notable exceptions, these officials are conservative 
and adhere rather closely to the traditions of the old-time labor 


: 


ee ee ee 


v 


LEADERS HERE AND ABROAD © 315 


union, This makes the American Federation of Labor the 
most conservative labor body in the world, and yet it is prob- 
ably true that no labor movement in any country is fought 
more bitterly by employers than the A. F. of L. 

But fully one-third of the delegates to this annual conven- 
tion represent State bodies, central labor unions, and individual 
unions which have no affiliation with international bodies. 
Naturally, the latter group of delegates have a larger measure 
of freedom than is exercised by the representatives of inter- 
national unions because the latter are usually instructed how 
to vote on important measures by the membership which elected 
them. And yet the growing radicalism among some of the 
larger unions which have committed themselves to Socialism 
and even more extreme measures, together with the independ- 
ence in the smaller groups just mentioned, presents rather a 
formidable array against the bulwarks of conservatism found 
in the international unions. 

The Executive Council of the American Federation of 
Labor, which consists of the president, eight vice-presidents, 
the treasurer and the secretary, has always been extremely con- 
servative, due largely perhaps to the influence of Samuel Gom- 
pers, who was hated among labor leaders in Europe because 
of his constant and consistent opposition to all affiliations of 
the American Federation of Labor with the radical European 
labor organizations. 

Mr. Gompers had a practically uninterrupted career as presi- 
dent of the A. F. of L. for nearly forty years, being elected 
vear after year without opposition. 

It is probably true that the American labor movement has 
never produced a more statesmanlike leader than Samuel 
Gompers. During all of the conventions of the Federation 
which I attended, I invariably sat at the reporters’ table just 
before the platform, and never missed a single session of the 
convention. I therefore had an opportunity to watch Mr. 
Gompers very closely. He always was absolute master of 
every situation. Never did he seem to lose his grip in any 
discussion. Sometimes at a particularly critical period when 
there seemed danger that the convention would take what ap- 


316 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


peared to him to be a mistaken attitude toward a particular 
problem, he would hand his gavel to one of the vice presidents 
and speak to the question under discussion. Under such cir- 
cumstances there was instant and complete attention on the 
part of the delegates, for Mr. Gompers seemed to speak as an 
“oracle” to these delegates. Rarely in the history of the Fed- 
eration did they take a position contrary to the wish of their 
leader once he had expressed his own convictions and desires. 
However, he never limited the debate, especially on the part 
of the opposition. He was much more generous and lenient in 


this respect than were the delegates themselves, particularly 


those who opposed him in any principle or policy. 

And yet there was ordinarily nothing magnetic about him. 
Rather, he was dynamic—producing changes through the sheer 
force of his character. He held sway over the four hundred 
delegates, not as a czar, but because of the profound respect 
his followers had for him. Whether he would have lost his 
grip had he lived is problematic, but it was generally under- 
stood in trade-union circles that ‘Sam’? Gompers was to be 
president of the American Federation of Labor as long as 
he cared to hold the office. 

Quite contrary to the general opinion in this country, Samuel 
Gompers never called a strike. Indeed, as president of the 
American Federation of Labor he did not have the power to 
call a strike, such power being vested only in officials of the 
international labor unions, and then usually only after their 
members had themselves voted to go out on strike. And yet 
he has frequently been bitterly scored for creating strike situa- 
tions which he had actually done his utmost to prevent. He 
often said that he had prevented more strikes than any man 
in America, and this was undoubtedly true. 

Whatever else may be said about Mr. Gompers as a fighter 
for labor, he could not fairly be charged with being anything 


but a thorough-going American. He was loyal to the last de- 


gree—and to the last moment of his life, as his final words | 
testified: “God bless our American institutions—may they 


grow better day by day.” 
For many years I had been hearing him say in substance: 








LEADERS HERE AND ABROAD _ 317 


“The workingmen of the world will never go out to shoot 
down their fellow workers of another nationality in order to 
satisfy the ambitions of their rulers, no matter who they may 
be.’ But when the World War came he confessed that he had 
been disillusioned. He accused the German workingmen—par- 
ticularly the Socialists—of being traitors to their class, and he 
entered whole-heartedly into a defense of the Allies, commit- 
ting the entire Federation to the war “to win the peace.” He 
went to the front while the war was in progress, in order to 
secure material for addresses to spur on the workingmen of 
America in the production of war munitions. And he did 
everything in his power to persuade the American working- 
men to do their best. However, he would not listen to any 
proposals having as their object the reduction of wages, when, 
as he said, so many of the bosses were becoming rich on 
account of war profits. 

It has often been said that Mr. Gompers accumulated large 
sums of money through the acceptance of bribes. This was so 
utterly ridiculous among labor men themselves, who probably 
knew all the facts, that it was a standing joke. Mr. Gompers 
scorned political office, and he died a poor man. 

I have frequently heard him in public address and in personal 
conversation half sneer at “outsiders” who wanted to help 
promote his cause. He could not quite trust those who wanted 
to “help.” He was always suspicious of them and often he 
had a strong conviction that they did not understand the prob- 
lems of the real workingmen any way, and that, after all, the 
salvation of the worker lay with the worker himself and that 
it was only as the workingmen of America would bestir them- 
selves that they would find emancipation. There undoubtedly 
was a large measure of justification in this attitude, first, be- 

cause all kinds of faddists attempted to attach themselves to 
the labor movement, and if Mr. Gompers had listened to them 
they would undoubtedly have greatly embarrassed him in spite 
_of their sincerity; and, furthermore, it was necessary for him 
constantly to watch out for unscrupulous persons who sought 
to discredit the American Federation of Labor in the eyes of 
_the public. 










318 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


A strong effort was made to connect Mr. Gompers with all 
manner of lawlessness perpetrated by various persons during 
strikes and lockouts. This was notoriously the case when the 
Los Angeles Times building was dynamited. The McNamara 
brothers were arrested for the crime, although protesting their 
innocence. Money was raised for their defense by the Ameri- 
can Federation of Labor, because it was insisted that they 
should be regarded as innocent until they had been proven 
guilty, but meanwhile an investigation committee was appointed 
by Mr. Gompers to secure the facts so far as they were able. 
This committee was assured both by the McNamaras and by 
Clarence Darrow, their counsel, that the former were not 
guilty—even down to the day before they confessed their guilt. 
The disappointment in this case was crushing to Mr. Gompers. 
He wrote a most remarkable document on the subject of law- 
lessness in general and the McNamara case in particular, and 
gave it world-wide publicity. 

Samuel Gompers was the frontiersman of trade unionism in 
America. Others had previously established labor unions 
which were powerful in their day, but they were loosely or- 
ganized and unrelated as compared with the American Fed- 
eration of Labor, to the perfection of which Mr. Gompers gave 
his life. Being a frontiersman, he developed many of the char- 
acteristics which one finds among all pioneers. He was a tre- 
mendous individualist. He was extremely jealous of what he 
had established; he often failed to take a long-range view of 
the labor movement which had grown up the world over while 
he was busy hewing away for the labor movement in America. 
He sometimes forgot that the expression of this movement 
could not be wholly within the confines of any country or any 
organization, no matter where it was established or by whom it 
was directed—that the peculiar conditions in each country must 
determine the character and the method of expression, and that 
the elements of time and change had much to do with it. One 
of the results of this attitude was that he made many enemies 
inside the Federation who hated him more cordially than they 
hated the “capitalistic” class. 


Samuel Gompers’ devotion to the single idea of the trade 


LEADERS HERE AND ABROAD _ 319 


union as he knew it, and his exaltation of the great organiza- 
tion which he built up, and whose president he was for nearly 
forty years, accounts for most of the apparent inconsistencies 
of which he has been accused. His mistakes of judgment were 
made mainly because of his zeal to help the workers. There is 
no need to enumerate them or to dwell upon the times when, as 
president of the American Federation of Labor, he was forced 
in his representative capacity into political and economic posi- 
tions for which he had little heart. It should be said, however, 
that he never whimpered or apologized or “passed the buck’’ to 
others. He assumed full responsibility for whatever position 
he took. 

There is no doubt that the radical forces in the American 
labor movement which had so long been held back by Mr. 
Gompers’ sturdy opposition will now fight as never before. 
The leaders of the radical movement in America will be en- 
thusiastically assisted by their comrades in every other land, 
who will bring great pressure to bear upon their representatives 
in this country to see that their well-known program of “boring 
from within’ will be consistently carried out in the future. 
These foreign leaders and their representatives in the United 
States believe that the old American Federation of Labor is 
almost ready to crumble to pieces and that the ruins will be built 
into “one big union’ which shall speak for all the class-con- 
scious workers of America. The old guard which has sur- 
rounded Mr. Gompers will be hard pressed. If the old order 
is to continue they will need all the help they can get, both from 
employers of labor and those who believe in Mr. Gompers’ 
kind of trade unionism. Otherwise, it will transpire that the 
line-up in the industrial world will consist of the old guard on 
one side, while arrayed against them will be the radicals—in- 
directly aided by the employers—and after they together have 
routed the old guard, the radicals will proceed to put the em- 
ployers out of business. Perhaps not until then will Mr. 
Gompers’ Federation of Labor be vindicated. 

I have given so much space to Mr. Gompers’ personal his- 
tory and position because he is fairly typical of literally hun- 
dreds of other labor leaders who at this time are in power in 


320 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


the labor movement in this country, and no doubt many of 
these lesser lights will soon loom large in the industrial his- 
tory of the United States. 

Reference has been made to the meeting of the British 
Trades Union Congress which I attended in Hull in 1924. 
There were 724 delegates, who represented 4,328,235 dues- 
paying members, as against 377 delegates in the last conven- 
tion of the American Federation of Labor, who represented 
2,865,979 members. 

As in the American Federation of Labor, the mine workers 
in the British Trades Union Congress had the largest member- 
ship—nearly 800,000, having 171 delegates out of the total of 
724. In the American Federation the miners’ delegates cast 
4,025 votes out of a total of 28,318 and they have a mem- 
bership of about 402,500. 

It is worth noting by the way, that the entertainment fur- 
nished the delegates to the British Trades Union Congress and 
their friends was of an exceptionally high order, consisting of 
music on the great organ and by one of the city’s best or- 
chestras. There were also solos by some of its most talented 
singers. There were several of these concerts during the 
course of the week, after each of which refreshments were 
served to the entire assembly of never less than a thousand 
persons. It was remarkable that no intoxicating liquor was 
offered to the delegates at these receptions, which were usually 
presided over by the Lord Mayor of the City or the Sheriff, 
who, as is well known, is a high dignitary in the city’s govern- 
ment. One could wish that the same degree of sobriety was 
observed at the conventions of the American Federation of 
Labor. To be sure, there were special functions conducted by 
local trade unions to which certain members of the Congress 
were invited, particularly those who were affiliated with the 
crafts giving the special entertainment. At these there was 
more or less drinking. | 

A strong attempt was made to keep out of the Congress 
discussion regarding the weaknesses of the Labor Government, 
and practically none of the representatives of this government 
were in attendance at the Congress, except such as had special 


LEADERS HERE AND ABROAD _ 321 


duties in connection with the Congress. This meant that about 
twenty-five of the strongest men in the English labor move- 
ment were for the first time out of the meeting and its delib- © 
erations, This no doubt had a marked effect on the discus-. 
sions which took place, because their counsel was greatly 
missed. 

On the other hand, many of the delegates insisted upon 

criticizing the government just as they would criticize any 
other government. Criticizing the government is a favorite 
indoor sport in Europe, whereas, in the American Federation 
of Labor, the government is rarely referred to, the emphasis 
being purely upon economic and industrial problems. But this 
difference is accounted for by the fact that Labor in England 
is in politics and the American Labor movement is not. 
It was boldly stated that under the Labor Government there 
were fewer civil rights than under a Tory Government, and the 
champions of the government had rather a hard time of it in 
their attempt to vindicate Ramsey Macdonald and his asso- 
ciates. 

There were quite a number of women delegates in the Con- 
gress, and they were of a type who did not hesitate to speak 
their convictions whenever necessary—and they could speak 
well and forcefully. It was plainly to be seen that they were 
accustomed to holding their own in debates with the men. This 
was in strong contrast with the American Federation of Labor, 
where the women very rarely speak, and then most modestly. 

“No Smoking” signs—out of deference to the women— 
were conspicuously displayed in the fine big municipal hall in 
which the Congress met, but the women delegates themselves 
were among the most inveterate smokers. It was reported that 
250,000 women were connected with the unions affiliated with 
the Congress, but it was insisted that they were regarded as 
“workers” and not as “women.” What was meant by this 
became evident when Congress opposed women who had en- 
tered industrial life going into “service,” even when employ- 
ment at their chosen occupation could not be secured. 

The sportsmanship of the English was repeatedly mani- | 
fested during the Congress, particularly when delegates made 


322 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


speeches on subjects which, it was plain to be seen, did not 
meet with the approval of the Congress. But Congress cheered 
the speakers just as though what had been said had made a 
great hit—and then decisively voted down the resolution under 
consideration. , 

There were frequent references to the “platform’’ as a body 
or group necessarily apart from the floor, the theory being that 
the men on the platform, who numbered something like 
seventy-five, were made up largely of members of Parliament 
and officials either of labor unions or of political organizations, 
but it was remarked that the convention platform and floor 
were closer together than ever before. There was, however, 
a constant fire back and forth between the two. The ‘“‘old- 
timers’ were continually being heckled by the youngsters— 
most of whom were Communists or otherwise radical. They 
were charged with being too close to the bosses in their social 
functions to retain an independent position economically. But 
the old campaigners in the Congress easily disposed of the 
young enthusiasts, usually by raising a laugh at their crude or 
rash statements. At one point the situation became so tense 
that the presiding officer, Albert A. Purcell, who was the 
fraternal delegate of the Congress to the 1925 convention of 
the American Federation of Labor, left the chair, declaring 
that he would not return until an unusually reckless and sharp- 
tongued young Communist had apologized to him. In this he 
was overwhelmingly backed by the Convention, and there was 
nothing left for the offender to do but to withdraw his remarks. 

The Congress—again quite different from the American 
Federation of Labor—was almost entirely Protestant in its 
make-up. Many of the delegates were lay preachers in the 
non-conformist churches throughout England, and it was re- 
markable how frequently the speakers quoted Scripture pas- 
sages in their addresses on social, economic, and even political | 
questions. They showed a familiarity with the Bible which. 
was very striking, particularly in their application of Scripture 
passages to the situation which they were discussing. Quoting | 
from the Bible is rare among labor leaders in America. Nat- 


LEADERS HERE AND ABROAD — 328 


urally, however, the introduction of Bible passages by certain 
of the speakers gave the radicals their opportunity for further 
ridicule, but quick as a flash came back another passage from 
the Bible which ordinarily successfully squelched the venture- 
some person who dared to come to grips with these trained 
debaters. 

The official spokesman for the Russian trade-unionists at 
the Labor Congress was Tomsky, who when he arose to speak © 
was greeted with tremendous enthusiasm. It was the first time 
in the history of the British labor movement that a delegate © 
from Russia had addressed the Congress. Tomsky called at- 
tention to the fact that the body which he represented had over 
6,000,000 members, although there were only 23 national 
unions in the council. Their work, he declared, was more 
centralized than it was in England. 

“There is a growing realization,” he said, “of the necessity 
for greater concentration on the part of Labor, because in the 
economic struggle that is going on all over the world Labor 
is facing greater concentration on the part of the capitalists. 

“Capital is becoming internationalized,”’ he declared, ‘and 
the class struggle of the future will be not only economic but 
political,” he added. 

“Labor lost the war,” he said. “The profiteers won it, and 
ever since the war there has been a conquest against labor 
men. Workers must not be satisfied with small changes in 
laws granted by the capitalistic class, Labor must write its 
own laws. Just as appetite increases in the process of eating, 
so Labor will increase its power as it takes more power. We 
were against the war of 1914 because millions of workers were 
compelled to shoot down their brothers, but the workers in 
our country are now learning the difference between national 
interests and class interests. Russian workers were told by the « 
propagandists that the English workingmen would come to de- 
stroy them, but this did not happen. It was due to the will of 
the English workers who said ‘Hands off Russia’ that Russia 
won. 

“The perils of the war for workers have not yet been over- 


B24 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


come. The Versailles Treaty has crushed the German workers 
through the compulsory payment of reparations. The iron | 
hand of war capitalists still has the workers by the throat.” 

His address was given in the Russian language, but was 
translated in sections by an interpreter and consumed almost an 
shour. 

There was considerable discussion of the Russian situation 
by the delegates to the Congress. 

“The Russians are not angels,” it was said by one of the 
delegates, “but they are not as terrible as the movies make 
them out to be. There are many appearances of difference 
between the Russians and the British Trades Union workers. 
They do not hide these differences, but no one has the right to 
say that the Russians should abandon their ideals for which 
they fought and gave their lives. We feel that the trade-union- 
ists of Russia have not been given a fair chance. In their 
approach to England they have met with closed doors and 
barbed-wire entanglements. We have no right to demand that 
the Russians must abandon this or that. Let us have a free 
discussion without demanding that anything should be given 
up, at least until we are through discussing our problems with- 
out restraint. Meanwhile, the Russian workers should be met 
‘upon an equal footing. We believe that in the labor movement 
‘there should be neither winners nor vanquished among trade- 
unionists. The fact that the Russians have not been treated 
as equals in conferences conducted by the State should not be 
a precedent for trade-unionists to follow. There has been a 
prejudice against the Russians simply because they were 
Russians.” 

On the other hand, there was considerable objection to the 
over-enthusiastic reception given the Russian delegates. ‘“We 
must not give way to the disposition to fall down and worship 
these Russians,” it was said. ‘Nor must we permit them to 
dictate to us. We believe that they are straight men, much 
straighter than some of those that Russia has sent to this coun- 
try in other connections, but we must apply to them the same 


rules as to who has the right to represent Labor that we apply 
to all others.” 


bP 


LEADERS HERE AND ABROAD — 325 


Leaders in the American churches often refer to the fact 
that so many of the English labor leaders are lay preachers. 
and that on every Sunday afternoon they speak at the great 
brotherhood meetings as well as in the regular Church services... 
They refer with keen disappointment to the fact that this is’ 
not the situation in the United States. But the religious lead- 
ers of America are themselves to blame—they simply have not 
given the labor leaders a chance to do precisely the same kind 
of religious work that is being done by the labor leaders in 
England. There is no doubt that there are proportionately as 
many labor leaders in the American churches as there are in 
the churches of Great Britain, and it is also true that they are 
quite as capable of making public addresses, and if they have 
not been as active in religious work as their brothers across 
the sea, it has been because the organization and work of our 
churches have failed to provide for the enlistment of activities 
of men of this type. 

In the first place, as our larger American churches are 
strongly dominated by the employing class and by the middle- 
class which hate the trade union even more than do the em- 
ployers, I have found that there has been strong opposition to 
addresses given by “walking delegates”—as labor officials are 
contemptuously characterized. 

Furthermore, in our American churches and religious as- 
semblies we are much more given to the expression of only. 
orthodox views regarding, not only economics, but religion. 
In England there is greater freedom given to both religious: 
leaders and labor leaders in the expression of their convic- 
tions. A preacher can scarcely be tried for heresy in England 
to-day nor is the labor leader so apt to be regarded as a “rad- 
ical” as is the case in the United States. 

Also, there is greater democracy in England among the dif- 
ferent classes than there is in this country in Church govern- 
ment and control—strange as this may seem when one con- 
siders that actual class consciousness among various groups is 
more strongly developed in the old country than it is in the 
United States. For example, I frequently found on Y.M.C.A. 
and Church boards, and special committees, in England, in par- 


826 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


ticular, outstanding labor men, both officials and ordinary 
. workingmen, whereas in the United States this is rarely so 
except in local churches which are composed largely of work- 
. ingmen themselves. 

I know quite a number of American labor leaders who un- 
doubtedly received their training as public speakers in the 
churches which they attended as boys and young men, as is the 
case with many of the labor leaders in England, but unfortu- 
nately it seems that while a very large percentage of the Eng- 
lish labor men retained their interest in religious matters and 
worked loyally for the churches of which they were members 
after they became identified with the labor movement, in the 
United States the labor men, as they became more active in 
the labor movement as officials, gradually lost their interest in 
church work, largely for the reasons which I have just given. 
It is not that they have become antagonistic to the Church— 
they are simply indifferent. In many cases they have a sincere 
conviction that they are working out the principles of religion 
in the work that they are doing to build up the level of living 
for our common humanity. But while they are so strongly 
emphasizing the purely physical and economic interests of the 
people, they might easily include the more distinctly spiritual 
aspects of life had they been so trained. 

The Churches are to blame for this, because in their teach- 
ing—aside from the mere passing of resolutions at national 


conventions—they have emphasized the declaration that social. 


work is not “religious” in its nature, that merely to help people 
in their day-by-day living, giving them better homes and higher 
wages and more leisure is of comparatively little consequence, 
and that those who are engaged in this work often stand in 
the way of the teaching of “spiritual truth.” This naturally 
has eliminated the men who are sincerely convinced that so 
far as they are concerned there is no greater task which 
should absorb their attention than the one which they know 
best of all, and in which and for which they can most easily 
and consistently work. 

It is also worthy of observation that particularly in Eng- 
land many of the ministers are deep students of economic and 





LEADERS HERE AND ABROAD — 327 


political questions, large numbers of them being authorities on 
such matters, having written books and frequently delivered 
addresses upon them. It may be that these religious leaders 
have been compelled to study these conditions because they 
have been so frequently brought face to face with them because 
of the persistency of the English labor leaders, who have a 
faculty of insisting upon attention being given their problems. 
American labor leaders have simply become indifferent and 
have left the Church strictly alone. 


XXVI 
THE RELIGION OF THE NEW DEMOCRACY 


HE men of every age believed that they were living on the 

verge of a great crisis. It probably has been true. It 
does not require a very wise man, therefore, to say that we are 
living in the most important age in the world’s history. No 
man would dare prophesy what big story will have the front 
page in to-morrow morning’s newspaper. Events of tremen- 
dous significance are taking place so fast that we scarcely notice 
them. 

In my twenty-five years’ contact with national and inter- 
national problems it has been very clear that down beneath the 
series of great happenings there is going on the struggle for 
democracy the world over. This seems to be the culmination 
of a fight which has challenged the finest men and women who 
ever lived—‘‘of whom the world was not worthy.” Down 
through the centuries men and women have fought for democ- 
racy in religion, in government, in education—they have strug- 
gled for social democracy, the democracy of the sexes, the 
democracy of the races, and now we are in the throes of 
the fight for industrial democracy. Just what form the latter 
will take nobody knows, but it must be apparent to any open- 
eyed observer that these various phases of the fight are one— 

_and that just as the common people were victorious in the past, 
so they are sure to win to-day. 

- Conditions throughout the whole world indicate that this is 
the era of the common man. Slowly but surely the masses of 
_the people are coming into their own. No human power can 
stop their. onward march, and no Divine power will. 

What shall be the attitude of the Church in this new democ- 
racy which is growing so rapidly among the people? Shall 
.the Church permit unscrupulous agitators to usurp the place 
. which rightfully belongs to it, or shall the Church with courage 


.finish the task which it so long ago began, so that this new 
328 


RELIGION OF NEW DEMOCRACY 329 


democracy shall be charged, not with the spirit of gross ma- 
terialism, but with the spirit of Jesus? This to my mind is 
the most important question which confronts the Church 
to-day. 

In the first place, its leaders must believe in the Church. 
During one summer I lectured on a Chautauqua Circuit in the 
Middle West in sixty-nine different cities on sixty-nine con- 
secutive days. I spoke each day on the general subject, ‘“The 
Church and the Man Outside.’”’ In each of these cities I held 
an afternoon conference with the ministers and officers of the 
local churches, largely for my own information, so that I 
might get a better picture of what was going on in these towns. 
‘In every instance I asked these men: 

“Suppose you were a man outside the Church, and knowing 
as you do just what the ideals, the motives and the activities 
of your churches are, what is there about them that would 
make you say, “That’s great! That’s worth living and working 
for!’ What is the big challenging thing in your church that 
would make you resolve to give yourself wholly and com- 
pletely to the promotion of such an enterprise?” 

Strange as it may seem, in not a single instance did I secure 
a prompt reply to my question. It was as though they had 
never thought of it before. Finally, “the challenge of the’ 
foreign missionary enterprise’ and other rather vague, worn 
answers were given, to all of which I invariably replied: 

“Suppose you were selling goods for some big concern in 
this country and you could not immediately give a reason as 
to why your prospect should buy these goods—you would lose 
your job as quick as a wink. And yet here you are giving your 
lives to the promotion of an important organization in this 
town, and you cannot answer even to your own satisfaction why 
a man outside the Church should believe in it and identify 
himself with it.”’ | 

I admit that my method was rather rough, and in some ways 
I was taking an unfair advantage, but it has always been per- 
fectly obvious to me that democracy knows what it believes in, 
it knows what it wants, and—it is getting it. The Church must 
be at least equally definite and confident. 


330 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


The Church must vindicate its right to be the final authority 
on great moral and ethical problems. I do not say that the 
Church must be the final authority on economic and sociologi- 


cal questions—this is not its chief business, however well in- 


formed its ministers may be regarding these subjects. 


But the Church above every other organization must in- : 


terpret the religion of the new democracy, and this means that 
it must be able to interpret life in all of its aspects because our 
great social, economic, and political problems are fundamentally 
moral and religious in their nature. There never was a strike, 
an epidemic, a war, a social or economic situation of any kind, 
that did not have all around it and shot through it a clear-cut 
moral principle, so that what I am advocating is not an abstract 
thing far removed from the life of the people. It is the 
preacher’s business to find this principle and to apply it fear- 
lessly in his public preaching. There is nothing more im- 
portant than this—there is more dynamite in it than there is in 
the half-baked preaching that one often hears on theoretical 
social problems. 

We have been told by the biggest men of our times that 
during the next fifty years the world’s greatest problems will 
be spiritual. This note is found in the best literature of the 
day, in the platforms of political parties, in the pronounce- 
ments of conventions, and in the gatherings of other groups 
of citizens. When even.a secular convention wishes to express 
the deep spiritual feeling which may have gripped it through 


a speech or some other impelling force, its members spon- — 


taneously unite in singing the hymn, “Onward, Christian Sol- 
dier.” It would seem that the Church during the next genera- 
tion will have the greatest opportunity for service in all of its 
history. It is not a question as to whether religion is big 
enough to accomplish this purpose, it is rather a question as 
to whether the Church is big enough to apply the principles of 
religion to the modern situation. One of the greatest needs 
of the Church to-day is prophets and interpreters of life. 

I have a strong conviction that the Church offers a freer 
platform for a man with a real message than he can find any- 
where else. He will-be freer to express himself than he could 


Oe 


RELIGION OF NEW DEMOCRACY, 331 


possibly be as a lecturer, as a newspaper writer, or through a 
political party, but the pathetic fact remains that when men of 
God have appeared in every period of the Church’s progress 
they have met their greatest opposition, not from those outside 
the Church, but from those within. Jesus accused the Jews 
of his day of always having stoned the prophets which were 
sent unto them. Paul summed up his opinion of the people to 
whom these messengers were sent when he declared that the 
world was not worthy of them. Luther, Wyckliffe, Knox, 
Savonarola, and a long list of others of more modern times 
were compelled to withstand the opposition of those whose 
comprehension of the significance of the Kingdom of God was 
exceedingly narrow. 

One of the most startling things which I have encountered 
in my dealings with young ministers especially was their rest- 
lessness in their work. This restlessness was due less to theo- 
logical considerations than to sociological conditions. The 
reactionary element which is now in control of the Church has 
sneeringly said that men of this type are “socialists” or “an- 
archists’’ and. that the Church is better off without them. It 
has often happened that men have been driven into radical 
positions because of the intolerance of this reactionary group, 
which usually has not the remotest idea what either socialism 
or anarchy means. 

If the Church is to hold its place in the new democracy, it 


must take into account the new economic situation with which 
‘the world is confronted. Great social movements outside the 
_Church have taken the place of the Church in the hearts of the 


—_—~ 


people, for which they are making the same supreme sacrifice 
that is being made by the “missionaries of the Cross” and others 
who are prompted by the finest spirit. 

The great industrial revolution which is sweeping over the 
world must find the Church open-minded. It must not be the 
last to accept the great doctrines of the democracy in which the 
rest of the world believes. 

In the new democracy the Church. must be big enough to 
include all those whose lives are dominated by the spirit of 


332 A SON OF THE BOWERY 


Jesus and who seek to bring in the Kingdom of God, no matter 
what their economic beliefs may be. 

Many thousands of perfectly sincere men and women have 
been kept out of the Church because they felt they would not 
be welcome on account of their economic philosophies even if 
they gave every evidence of sincerity in their religious lives, 
yielding “the fruits of the Spirit’ and showing the signs of the 
Christian graces. | 

While the Church must not be called upon to advocate any 
particular social system, those who apply for membership in 
the Church should be questioned, not with reference to their 
economic beliefs, but their religious convictions. The fact that 
they may appear “unsound” in these economic beliefs should 
make no difference whatever to the Examining Committee or 
the clergyman who may be responsible for their reception into 
the Church. Frankly, it should be recognized that a man may 
be a Socialist, a communist, or a philosophical anarchist, and 
still be a Christian. It is absurd to insist otherwise. It be- 
hooves those of us who are in the Church to become more 
familiar with the economic belief of men outside the Church, 
so that we may better understand their religious aspirations. 

Sixty years ago there was a Civil War in the United States. 
Practically everybody else has squared up and forgotten it a 
long time ago except the Methodist Episcopal Church, the 
Presbyterian Church, the Baptist Church, and several other 
groups which still maintain the divisions for which the Civil 
War. was responsible, and it is almost hopeless to think they 
will ever get together again, even though the occasion for the 
. division has long since passed by. Indeed, in many respects, 
different ecclesiastical organizations in the same denomina- 
tion are more bitter against one another than they are against 
organizations of other denominations. 

‘It is one of the tragedies in our national life that most of 
these denominations imagine that they are so essential that 
even the Lord Himself could not carry out His purposes for 
the world’s redemption unless He operated through their 
peculiar methods, and unless all men were brought to a knowl- 
edge of the peculiar faith which holds them together. 





RELIGION OF NEW DEMOCRACY 333 


But history has frequently demonstrated otherwise. When 
the Church of England seemed to get away ftom the people, 
John Wesley was raised up and organized what later became . 
the Wesleyan Church as a protest against the ineffectiveness of 
the Church of England. And later, when the Wesleyan, or 
Methodist, Church seemed to fall into a similar position, Wil- 
liam Booth organized the Salvation Army as a protest against 
the ineffectiveness of the Wesleyans. And to-day, in spite of 
the fact that the Salvation Army ignores all the sacraments of 
the Church and many other things which are regarded by 
churchmen as absolutely essential, no one will dare say that the 
Salvation Army is not of God and that it is not accomplishing 
a great piece of work throughout the entire world. 

Our Churches need to learn the lesson, in the face of the 
modern social situation, that God may yet again raise up an- 
other prophet through whom He may speak. Nobody knows 
what form the organization may take which this modern 
prophet shall set up. His work may be done outside the Church 
altogether. 

God in nature never made two things exactly alike—even 
the fingerprints of every new-born child are different from 
those of every other child that was ever born or that ever will 
be born. Why should it be thought necessary that God run 
all men through the same mold so that they shall all think alike 
about religion. The religion of the new democracy must give 
to every man the right to work out his own salvation even 
though it is done with fear and trembling. In the actual living 
of their own lives they should be responsible to God alone, con- 
forming their lives to His will. 

The raoadfesittion of a man’s religion will change as time . 
goes on. If one were to place ten posts in one’s bacieyatd and 
come back at the end of ten years, he would find them just as 
they were when they were placed there, but if one were to plant 
ten healthy young trees and return in ten years, he would find 
strong, sturdy growths. In the one case, the posts were dead, 
but in the other, the trees were alive. Many of us have not 
had a new revelation from God in years. We cannot under- 
stand why others whose minds and hearts are open to the truth 


334 A SON OF THE BOWERY. 


have developed and grown. Religion is a progressive thing. 
There is a tremendous sweep between the revelation of God to 
Moses in the burning bush, and the revelation of God to the 
world through Jesus. 

The religion of the new democracy not only demands that 
_ each man shall live his own life, but it insists that he give up. 
his own life that others may live. If the Church is to make 
good in the modern situation, it must engage, not only in cam- 
paigns for “individual salvation,’ but in crusades for social 
salvation. The time has come for the Church to promote a 
great crusade with this slogan: 

“He that saveth his life shall lose it, and he that loseth his 
life for my sake shall find it.” (There is good authority for 
such a slogan. 

The ‘“‘Lord’s Prayer” is a social prayer. There isn’t a single 
“T” or “my” in the entire petition. From the very first word 
—‘QOur”’ it is a collective appeal—“give us this day our daily 
bread!’’; “forgive us our trespasses’’ ; “lead ws not into tempta- 
tion” ; “deliver us from evil.” 

“T will not see thy face except thy brother be with thee” 
may- be literally applied to the one who offers the “Lord’s 
Prayer” as his petition. 

What does the Church need to-day? If it is to fulfill its 
- function in the modern situation, it does not necessarily need 
more money. It was most powerful, considering its numerical 
strength, when it had practically no wealth. When Jesus sent 
out his disciples to conquer the world, he told them not to 
' bother with money; and in those days the Church was a great 
revolutionary force. Of course, the Church needs money to 
carry on its work under present conditions, but money threat- 
ens some day to become the curse of the Church just as it 
has proven to be the curse of many another institution. 

It does not need more members, It is not a question of 
whether the Church is gaining or losing in membership, for the 
actual power of an organization is never determined by mere 
numbers. It is a question of whether it is gaining the right 
kind of members. Gideon’s band of a few hundred was far 
more effective than the army of thousands of half-hearted sol- 


/ 


RELIGION OF NEW DEMOCRACY 335 


diers which preceded it. That minister who said that they 
had been having a great revival in his church—not because so 
many had been added to his church, but because so many had 
been getting out, spoke a solemn truth. 

It does not need more ministers, despite the cry of Theologi; 

cal Schools and Church Boards for more recruits. There are 
now Over 200,000 ministers in this country. What is needed 
is not more ministers, but better ministers, real interpreters and 
prophets of the modern day. 

It does not need more organization. There are already too 
many societies in the Church. It requires too much energy 
and vitality to keep the machinery going. One of the severest 
and most justifiable criticisms of the Church is that it is over- 
organized. It needs to be more simple and more direct. It 
needs to touch the life of the community more than it is now: 
doing. 

It does not need more sociability, n nor more philanthropy, nor 
more efficiency. It needs all of these, but above all it needs 
men and women who are ready to pay the price of disciple- 
ship. More than all these it needs the discipline of persecution 
because it has dared go contrary to the accepted order of things 
—when these things are wrong. Nothing would make the 
Church grow in influence quite so much as to be persecuted ‘for 
“righteousness’ sake.” 

There are some Churches and individuals who seek to justify 
their indifference to the social situation by the scripture: “I am 
determined to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ and 
him crucified.” It is unfortunate that they have narrowed 
this text to a mere theological definition. What does “Jesus 
crucified” signify if it doesn’t mean service and sacrifice and 
suffering? The exponents of social service might well take - 
the Cross as an emblem of their philosophy, for it is more 
nearly typical of what they believe than any other symbol. 
The deepest meaning of the Cross finds its expression in un- 
selfish devotion to all the needs of men. 


, 
as 
he 
ie 
ih 





Nig 


sha g 
4\ 


aa 

if 

¢ 

1 aa 
t 


Bee A a 


ee 


iy 
{¥ 


4 hy 
ate 

st 

a 





B7BICI.. Af J 


AR-13-86 32188 MS 


te | 
eae a ae 
fy! 


Mat Ay 
a ~) 


te iivas A ’ 
ta, 7, 
" my ; al J t 
. F it 


(% 


} irs 


Aa dh Naor acin sy 


PA 





TET 


2 0104 


i 


# 


set <r sie NS 


pe na ma ete Eat 


pt reich amen am a Site ee Wl mee 





